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COPMilGHT DEPOSIT. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES 
IN SHAKESPEARE 



PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES 

OF THE 

ELIZABETHAN CLUB 

YALE UNIVERSITY 



SOME 
TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES 
IN SHAKESPEARE'^ 



BY 

CHARLES D. STEWART 



NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

MDCCCCXIV 



^1 



Copyright, 1914 
By Yale University Press 



First printed September, 1914. 1000 copies 



NOV -5 1914 

S)C1,A3S7664 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

That Runaways' Eyes May Wink 

Romeo and Juliet I 

Airy Air Troilus and Cressida 14 

Both to My God, and to My Gracious King 

Hamlet 20 

But that to Your Sufficiency ... As Your Worth 

IS Able Measure for Measure 26 

The Body is with the King, but the King is not 
y WITH the Body 

Hamlet 34 

Grates Me. The Sum 

Antony and Cleopatra 41 

I SEE THAT Men Make Ropes in Such a Scar 

All's Well that Ends Well .... 44 
Armado o' the One Side 

Love's Labour s Lost 52 

For Defect of Judgment 
Is Oft the Cause of Fear 

Cymbeline 56 

Ignorance Itself is a Plummet over Me 

Merry Wives 0/ Windsor .... 61 
Greater than Great, Great, Great, Great Pompey 

Love's Labour's Lost 67 

Some Run From Brakes of Ice and Answer None 

Measure for Measure 69 

Qualtitie Calmie Custure Me! 

Henry V 71 

But Here, Upon This Bai>ik and Shoal of Time 

Macbeth 1^ 



viii CONTENTS 

But He That Tempered Thee Bade Thee Stand Up page 

Henry V 79 

To Say "Ay" and "No" to Everything that I Said 

Lear 83 

They Know Your Grace hath Cause and Means 

and Might; 
So hath Your Highness 

Henry y 88 

The Black Prince, Sir; Alias the Prince of Dark- 
ness All' s Well that Ends Well .... 93 
Leontes' Obscure Soliloquy 

The Winter' s Tale 96 

The Clearest Gods 

King Lear 1 10 

To Dance Their Ringlets to the Whistling Wind 

Midsummer Night' s Dream . . . 116 
Move the Still-peering Air 

All's Well that Ends Well .... 119 
To Pay Five Ducats, Five, I Would not Farm It 

Hamlet 123 

Yes, For a Score of Kingdoms You Should Wrangle 

The Tempest 125 

Cleopatra's Answer to Caesar 

Antony and Cleopatra 131 

Lord Bardolph's Reply 

2 Henry IV 135 

As Those that Fear They Hope, and" Know They Fear 

As You Like It 147 

Painted Hope 

Titus Andronicus ...... 155 

Those Bated that Inherit but the Fall of the Last 

Monarchy All's Well that Ends Well .... 158 

The Spirit of Capulet •; 

Romeo and Juliet 162 

Her C's, Her U's and Her T's 

Twelfth Night 164 

A Fixed Figure for the Time of Scorn 

Othello 170 



CONTENTS IX 

I Loved for Intermission page 

Merchant of Venice 173 

More Than Mine Own; That Am, Have, and Will Be 

Henry Fill 182 

Thy Banks with Pioned and Twilled Brims 

The Tempest 192 

My Brother General 

2 Henry IV 195 

The Mystery of Hamlet 204 

Death's Heritage 

Romeo and Juliet 230 

That Smiles His Cheek in Years 

Love's Labour s Lost 234 

Would That Alone a Love He Would Detaine 

Comedy of Errors 237 

Adriana's Point of View 

Comedy of Errors 241 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES 
IN SHAKESPEARE 



SOME 

TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES 

IN SHAKESPEARE 

RUNAWAY'S EYES 

Juliet. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, 
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a waggoner 
As Phaeton would whip you to the west. 
And bring In cloudy night immediately. 
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night. 
That runaways' eyes may wink, and Romeo 
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen. . . . 

(Romeo and Juliet, iii, 2, 6, Globe ed.) 

More time and effort seem to have been 
spent on this crux than upon any other Hne in 
Shakespeare. In Furness' Variorum edition 
of the play, a crown octavo volume, twenty- 
eight pages of fine print are devoted to a re- 
view of the attempts that have been made to 
clear up the meaning; it occupies, in fact, the 
whole index to the play. The question which 
has been so long argued is — What does the 
"runaways" of the First Folio mean.? And 
should it be printed runaway s or runaways'? 
In what sense also, or in what connection, is 
this winking to be understood.? 

Gollancz says that runaways' eyes is "the 
main difficulty of the passage, which has been. 



2 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

perhaps, the greatest crux or puzzle in Shake- 
speare." R. Grant White, in his Shakespeare's 
Scholar, p. 373, says: "The error will prob- 
ably remain forever uncorrected unless a 
word which I venture to suggest seems as 
unexceptionable to others as it does to me." 
He then suggests rumour s eyes. Professor 
Charles F. Johnson, in his Shakespeare and his 
critics (1909) says: "In some cases, like 'that 
runaways eyes may wink,' in "Romeo and 
Juliet," it is impossible to hit upon a satisfac- 
tory reading, though we should like exceedingly 
to know who 'runaway' was. The conjecture 
'rumour's eyes' is not altogether satisfactory, 
and the question is insoluble." 

White, who at first felt certain that it should 
be edited rumour's, later changed his view to 
noonday's, while Hudson, on the other hand, 
printed it rumour's (1880). Thus the struggle 
with the passage has veered back and forth 
from the time of Theobald (1733) up to the 
present day. Our ancestors have seen this 
puzzling word of the Folio altered by editors 
in all sorts of ways. Knight's note in his pic- 
torial edition will give a slight idea of the 
trouble: 

"This passage has been a perpetual source 
of contention to the commentators. Their 
difficulties are well represented by Warburton's 
question: 'What run-aways are these whose 
eyes Juliet is wishing to be stopped?' War- 
burton says Phoebus is the runaway, Steevens 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 3 

proves that Night is the runaway. Douce 
thinks that JuHet is the runaway. Monck 
Mason is confident that the passage ought to 
be, 'that Renomy's eyes may wink,' Renomy 
being a new personage created out of the French 
Renommee, and answering, we suppose, to the 
'Rumour' of Spenser." Knight then adopts 
unawares, the suggestion of a compositor named 
Jackson. Others, of the present day, think 
that "runaways" are prying spectators on the 
street but yet wonder whether, after all, the 
word may not mean the steeds of the sun whose 
eyes will wink at sunset. 

More serious than this change in the inter- 
pretation of the word itself is the fact that, in 
the hope of wresting sense out of the passage 
as a whole, the words are cut up into quite 
different sentences in various editions, the edi- 
tor ignoring the punctuation of the First Folio 
entirely and putting a period here and a semi- 
colon there as he sees a chance to make some- 
thing else out of it; and this effort is still going 
on. Neilson's edition, for instance (1909), 
has gone back to a sentence division quite dif- 
ferent from that of the Globe text of 1895 long 
considered standard by Shakespeare scholars 
generally. It must be evident however that 
any ingenious effort with exclamation points, 
periods and commas must be vain so long as 
we remain in the dark as to the sense of the 
one word which gives the point of view of the 
whole passage. As so much of the text is in- 



4 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

volved, and that in the eloquent climactic 
passage where Juliet expectantly awaits the 
coming of the husband she has just married, 
it is a point that will be well worth settling 
permanently. 

In starting out, let us keep one fact to the 
fore: Shakespeare was always true to human 
nature in any set of circumstances. He did 
not deal in elaborate mythological allusions 
and ingenious figures of speech in and for them- 
selves; his expressions are such as will throw 
the deepest and most searching light upon the 
human heart, and that with an especial regard 
for the character speaking. Second: he does 
not jump quickly from one figure of speech to 
another with such mere liveliness of fancy as 
many critics think. He did this advisedly 
according to what might be accomplished by 
it; and in other cases he shows a remarkable 
faculty for sticking to the subject, so to speak, 
in long comparisons which are especially cal- 
culated to throw complete and dwelling light 
on the spirit of the speaker. He did this es- 
pecially at those places where he wished to 
engage our minds for a longer space upon some 
point important in the action or in our concep- 
tion of the chara<:ter. The present is a case in 
point. Shakespeare fully expected, when he 
wrote this passage, that because he had 
paved the way and thrown about the word so 
many figurative expressions, all tending to the 
same point of view, we would understand the 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 5 

sense of "runaway's" at once and gather the 
beauty of this way of saying it. Being of this 
nature, it is a passage which I might explain 
quickly by internal evidence alone; but as it 
is a case where scholarship has been at work, 
almost two hundred years, any seeming so- 
lution of mine would naturally be received 
with skepticism even though it were plausible. 
I must therefore not only prove it internally 
but prove it again by reference to other passages 
in the plays Vv^hich show Shakespeare's natural 
point of view in just such cases as Juliet's. 

As all lovers of Shakespeare are not supposed 
to be perfect in Elizabethan English, we shall 
set "runaway's" aside a moment while we dis- 
pose of the word "wink." This word, in 
Shakespeare's time, was not confined to its 
present usual meaning of shutting the eyes 
momentarily. It meant also the shutting of 
the eyes with the intention of keeping them 
closed, in which sense it is used repeatedly by 
Shakespeare. This is well enough understood 
by Shakespeare scholars, and was known to all 
those editors who have made an attempt to 
read the passage. 

Let us now turn our attention to "Henry 
V," V, 2, 327. We here see Shakespeare deal- 
ing with the subject of woman's modesty, 
Henry is trying to win the hand of Katherine 
the French princess. He is now conversing 
with Burgundy upon her reticence. Burgundy 
describes the princess as "a maid yet rosed over 



6 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

with the virgin crimson of modesty." Her 
maiden modesty and backwardness to consent 
to marriage he explains as due to "her naked 
seeing self." To which Henry replies, "Yet 
they do zvink and yield, as love is blind and 
enforces." 

There cannot, of course, be any doubt as to 
the meaning of zvink as used in this connection. 
We see then that Shakespeare, wishing to put 
stress on maiden modesty, takes the standpoint 
that it will only yield under conditions of dark- 
ness. Now Juliet is in a like position in re- 
gard to what she calls love's amorous rites. She 
is waiting secretly in the shadows of her father's 
orchard for the appearance of the husband 
whom she has married but a few hours before 
and whom she is to receive in her own cham- 
ber for the first time that night. She was 
scarce acquainted with him when she married 
him; she is a maid like Katherine though mar- 
ried. We find her modesty accentuated by 
having her look forward to the time when 
"strange love, grown bold, think true love 
acted simple modesty." At present, as she 
waits anxiously in the orchard, she has neither 
grown bold nor does the act of love seem modest 
to her. Here then we find two parallel cases 
as regards ante-nuptial modesty, and in both 
cases we see the word "wink" chosen. In 
Katherine's case there is no question as to its 
referring to darkness, and the wink refers to 
her own eyes. We shall therefore conclude, 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 7 

tentatively, that in Juliet's case it is the same. 
It is her own eyes that are supposed to wink; 
but as darkness is just falling it allows of this 
winking, or blinding, being accomplished in a 
different way. 

But if it is her own sight she is referring to, 
we now have to find a fit meaning for runaway* s^ 
because the text reads, "that runaway's eyes 
may wink." If we are going to assume that 
it is her eyes that are referred to, then she is 
the runaway; and now the question arises: 
In what sense may she be considered a runaway? 
That she has simply run away from home, 
being out in her father's orchard, is hardly satis- 
factory; it does not fit the elaborate figure of 
speech. To regard her as a runaway merely 
because she went secretly to Friar Laurence to 
be married proves equally futile when put to 
the test. For we are still left with the prob- 
lem of finding out how or why, in that sense of 
running away, she should wish her eyes to close 
or wink.? She is contemplating actual darkness 
in the oncoming of night, from which it will be 
seen that her having merely run away from home 
for a while that day does not apply with any 
sense to her present vein of thought. Even 
the poorest of critics, with few exceptions, 
have seen that the solution here is not to come 
from a very literal point of view. Whatever 
Shakespeare's meaning may be, the word has 
some figurative application which is more 
illuminating. 



8 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Let us turn next to "All's Well that Ends 
Well." The chaste Diana, whose Italian up- 
bringing, like Juliet's, has made womanly 
modesty the one great meaning of life to her, 
finds herself contemplating a crucial moment. 
She is dealing with Bertram under circumstances 
of secrecy; their relations, if Bertram has his 
way, are to be by stealth. Certain words rise 
to her lips as she contemplates the step of de- 
serting her colors and leaving her girlhood for- 
ever behind her. As she expresses it, she is in 
a pass where "we" (meaning women generally) 
"forsake ourselves." Now forsake certainly 
means to desert or give up what we feel ought 
to be clung to; and so, reading this "All's Well" 
passage in the strict light of the context we find 
one of Shakespeare's women regarding herself, 
in connection with the giving up of her prin- 
ciples of maidenhood, as a deserter or runaway. 
It is very apt and luminous of her inner life. 
In "Romeo and Juliet" we see Shakespeare 
dealing with a young Itahan girl of the same 
type of womanhood. She and Romeo have 
been secretly married, and in the evening of 
that same day we see her waiting, in a trans- 
port of anticipation, among the orchard trees. 
The blood has mounted to her cheeks as she 
sees her girlhood about to be relinquished; 
she has a lively sense of the too garish day; 
and being so modest she wishes night to fall 
speedily so that her own eyes may wink, or 
be blinded; for, as she says: 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 9 

Lovers can see to do their amorous rites, 
And by their own beauties; 

Which is to say, without eyes or the help of 
Hght. But deeper in her consciousness than 
this natural reticence, is the feeling that she is 
deserting that which has been the standard of 
her whole life — a standard of Madonna-like 
maidenhood which has been her whole mode of 
existence and which has been instilled into 
Italian womanhood especially for generations. 
It is quite a step to take, in her case as in Di- 
ana's. She is a runaway; and may not the 
meaning be as luminous in one place as the 
other? The wording is essentially the same 
and the cases are parallel. 

We have now found two passages, each of 
which throws light on this one line, and which, 
considered in combination, give this line com- 
plete and consistent sense so far as it may be 
considered separately. Accepting this meaning 
theoretically we must now put it to the actual 
and conclusive test. It must fit the whole 
context. If we have found the meaning, then 
that meaning, being Shakespeare's, will fall 
in with and illuminate the whole passage. 

Not only this, but every word of the passage, 
having that unity and continual reference to 
the central idea which is characteristic of 
Shakespeare's longer and more elaborate com- 
parisons, will focus its light on this one word 
and show it as having the very idea we have 
conjectured. 



lO SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Upon examination we find that it does so. 

Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, 
That runaway's eyes may wink — 

It is characteristic of Shakespeare that his 
characters, in moments of high feehng, draw 
the whole universe into their own point of view. 
They see the world, as we all do, in the light 
of self. This is very strongly brought out in 
Lear when he addresses the storm as being 
concerned wholly with his own interests; but 
it is the same in all of Shakespeare's work. 
He brings out always that we see the world 
through our own eyes; the universe takes on 
the immediate hue of the speaker's thoughts in 
regard to self. In the above passage we see 
suddenly that Juliet is regarding the universe 
in the light of a hed! The curtains, which have 
been gathered together and drawn back in the 
daytime, after the manner of beds in those days, 
will now spread out and come close together. 
What will be the result? Darkness in the bed. 
The occupant's eyes will then wink, or be in 
darkness, even when they are open; nothing 
need be seen; — which exactly suits the de- 
sires of the modesty to which this passage 
refers. If Juliet is seeing night from her own 
standpoint, then there is no doubt as to whose 
eyes will be shut or blinded; and in that case 
there can be no question as to who "runaway" 
is or in what sense she is a deserter. 

The whole passage insists upon being under- 
stood in that sense. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE II 

Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks 
With thy black mantle. 

In the days when falconry was a pastime, 
the falcon or hunting hawk, which was very shy 
and difficult to tame, was carried about with a 
black hood slipped over its head so that it could 
not see. This alone ought to be sufficient to 
settle the question as to whose eyes it is that 
are supposed to wink. Juliet, speaking from 
her own point of view, makes it plain what her 
attitude toward the oncoming darkness is. It 
is not simply that her blushes may not be seen 
but that she may not see. In fact, Shakespeare 
speaks of the blushes to make all the more vivid 
the image of the hood going down over her own 
head. And once it is proved who it was that 
was to wink, it is inevitable, by the sentence 
itself, who runaway is supposed to be. That 
point I believe we have nowtaken up and proved 
in all possible ways: we have seen like usage 
and a like point of view in two other cases in 
the plays; we have seen that our interpreta- 
tion is in keeping with Shakespeare's concep- 
tion of his ideal women; we have found also 
that it is harmonious with Shakespeare's way 
of making his characters speak in moments of 
deep feeling; and we have found that the line 
so interpreted and read in connection with its 
own immediate context illumines the whole pas- 
sage, the words of which in turn converge all 
their light upon it as upon a central idea. As 
all hope of solving any of the remaining Shakes- 



12 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

pearean cruxes has been practically, and I 
might say confidently, given up in the last ten 
or twenty years, this passage has been marked 
^'hopelessly corrupt,'' as in Neilson's recent 
edition, on the theory that a passage which no 
one could ever solve could not possibly be as 
Shakespeare wrote it. The Globe accordingly 
places the obolus against it. And Professor 
Johnson, whose recent book I have mentioned 
in the beginning, voices the generally accepted 
opinion that what has not been solved by this 
time will never be solved. This state of affairs 
is rather embarrassing to one who would fain 
come forth and invite the world to re-study 
Shakespeare with him. It is difficult enough 
to state the cruxes, with which the human 
mind seems to have gone completely astray, 
in a way that will make them simple, without 
having to struggle against the preconception 
that one is simply working in ambitious igno- 
rance. It creates a state of mind which is 
unsympathetic and therefore hard to help. 
But yet what beauty is hidden away in them! 
When you consider the feelings of Juliet in the 
light not merely of her modesty but of her 
whole previous state of being as a woman whose 
one ideal was chastity, such a step as marriage 
was like deserting the very world of maiden- 
hood. What a stroke of truth then to simply 
have her say the word runaway! So much in 
so little. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I3 

Dowden's explanation Is: "The central mo- 
tive of the speech is 'Come night, come Romeo.' 
Having invoked night to spread the curtain, 
Juliet says, with a thought of her own joyful 
wakefulness, 'Yonder sun may sleep' {wink 
having commonly this sense); and then she 
calls on Romeo to leap to her arms." He 
agreed with Warburton that "runaway's" 
means Phoebus or the sun. With the rest of 
them however he found difficulty in proving 
that it was well to call the sun a runaway when 
Juliet was complaining of its being slow. He 
tried however — with results remarkably hard 
to understand. 

The result of trying a different sentence di- 
vision, as instanced in Neilson's edition (1906) 
is that it has left on hand the following state- 
ment as a separate sentence. 

Untalked of and unseen 
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites, 
And by their own beauties; etc. 

Can anyone imagine Shakespeare tendering 
the piece of valuable information conveyed in 
these first two lines! 

The sentence division of the First Folio is 
correct. It is from this standpoint that I 
have explained the passage. The Globe text 
is quite acceptable in this regard; but the 
*' runaways'" of this edition should be changed 
to "runaway's." 



AIRY AIR 

(Troilus and Cressida, III, 3, 225) 

And like a dewdrop from a lion's mane 
Be shook to airy air. 

{First Folio) 

And like a dewdrop from a lion's mane 
Be shook to air. 

(Modern editions) 

This alteration of the First Folio text is 
wrong for a multitude of reasons. 

First. A play is intended to be acted. Cer- 
tain lines are therefore especially fitted for 
gesture. In this scene Achilles is sulking in 
his tent, and Patroclus, thinking his strange 
inactivity could only be due to love-sickness, 
comes in to remonstrate with him. With vivid 
and compelling imagery he compares Achilles 
to the lion that shakes this trifle from him. 
The argument would naturally be enforced by 
gesture, for actors have got to act; and for this 
purpose we have the quick abruptive shook 
followed by the flowing airy air. The gesture 
begins on "shook" by jerking the fist force- 
fully out from the left shoulder, and then the 
limp hand, rotating lightly on the wrist, describes 
two curves to depict the flowing air. We see 
the dewdrop thrown forth to evaporate — so 
light a trifle is love. The words airy air are 
what the careless hand follows as it swings 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 15 

idly on the wrist. As there is a contrast in 
pictorial idea between the strong lion and the 
inert pendent dewdrop, so there is contrast 
between the forceful half of the gesture and the 
part that deals with air; and the words fit it. 
With the mere words "to air" this cannot be 
done. As a well-known dramatic critic said, 
to whom I demonstrated the dramatic idea of 
the line, "It would cut the gesture oflF at the 
elbow." 

Second. As there is a contrast in pictorial 
idea between the masterful lion and the air- 
wandering drop of dew, and as this is enforced 
by contrast in gesture, so the words must also 
present a contrast from the standpoint of the 
ear alone. And each half of this contrast must 
be a true sound-picture. This is here accom- 
plished by means of two flowing r'j with mere 
vowels between; and right there a zephyr 
touches the imagination; we see it flow and 
turn and veer. This is the very art which 
"gives to airy nothing a local habitation and 
a name." And this is raised in value by juxta- 
position with shook. Try to say shook in a 
soft and flowing way or to gesture it as such a 
word. You cannot do it, for its sounds are 
essentially abrupt and forceful. For this pur- 
pose of poetic drama, "Be shook to air" will 
not do. The air does not flow. It falls flat. 

Third. Editors from the first have preferred 
the abbreviated line because they have thought 
the other was not logical. The theory is that 



l6 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

to describe a noun by an adjective made out 
of itself does not add anything to it. The 
theory would be good if it were true. But air 
is not always airy. Mere atmospheric air is 
not airy air. On that dewy morning when the 
lion rose and shook himself, it was a time when 
the air was in motion; the zephyrs of morning 
were abroad. The adjective "airy" has be- 
come incorporated in the language as expressing 
light and changeful qualities. Why then should 
not a poet who wishes to make live air be al- 
lowed to robe it in its qualities.? Nothing else 
will do to describe it, for air is unique. Without 
this adjective it is not a moving morning. 

Fourth. In editing Shakespeare we should 
be guided by his own practice more than by 
our logical theory. In "Lucrece" Shakespeare 
unquestionably uses the expression "dear dear, 
the first word being an adjective and the second 
a noun (line 1602). Any theory as to what 
Shakespeare would do must be discountenanced 
by what he did do; and this would warrant us 
in letting "airy air" alone. Moreover, when 
Shakespeare wished to convey the idea of mere 
air, simple scientific atmosphere, motionless 
and still, he was careful to use words that 
would say it; therefore we have in "Macbeth," 
"the casing air." That is to say, the globe- 
encircling or surrounding air. The idea con- 
veyed to the mind is motionless; the attention 
is concentrated on atmosphere itself. And so, 
as Shakespeare was so particular, it is reason- 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE \J 

able to suppose that if he wished to depict the 
Hghtsome breezes he would say the "airy air." 
Then too, as to the art of contrast in the 
line, — ideal, phonetic and dramatic, — we 
find that he has a particular penchant for the 
abrupt poetic uses of shook, and this especially 
in contrast with flowing r's and the open vowel 
sounds. In Antony and Cleopatra he de- 
scribes an earthquake in two lines. You can 
feel the very shock and jolt of it. 

.... the round world 
Should have shook. . . . 

Open the ear to the complete fullness of the 
round world (note the two rs working with 
vowels) and then the sudden oscillating effect 
of should-have-shook. There is no ro-o-o-u-u- 
und wor-r-r-ld about that; the actor would 
give his fist a motion calculated to jar creation. 
Shakespeare is doing the same thing here that 
he is in the passage from "Troilus and Cres- 
sida" — or would be if we printed what he 
wrote. 

I might remark in passing that the lines from 
Antony and Cleopatra are marked with the 
obolus signifying that there is editorial doubt 
as to whether their present form is a typograph- 
ical error or not (Globe edition). The reason 
it is suspected of loss or error is that the words 
do not smoothly fill out the regular pentameter 
measure that Shakespeare was supposed to 
write in; and the obolus is placed before "round 



1 8 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

world." Clark and Wright, our modern stand- 
ard authorities, evidently did not know that 
the particular vocalization of the words, to 
give the intended effect, would have to be 
something different from mere pentameter 
measure. 

When an editor has no ear for dramatic 
poetry he naturally fails in all such places. 
Then we have the text altered according to 
his idea, or else it is queried as being the mis- 
take of an early type-setter. 

Fifth. Shakespearean scholarship accounts 
for the superfluous "airy" by a very good typo- 
graphical theory. One of the common errors 
of a type-setter is that of setting a word twice. 
He has his attention called away from his work 
and when he resumes he sets the word he last 
had in mind instead of continuing where he 
left off. 

But, let us ask — If a compositor set the 
word air, and then left off and resumed on the 
same word, what would the result be? It 
would be "air air," not "airy air." So also 
with the compositor of three hundred years 
ago. He set up "ayrie ayre" as we now find 
it in the First Folio. Here the adjective and 
the noun differences are observed, which would 
hardly be the case if it were such an error. It 
shows care and attention. The theory by 
which the word is discarded is the very one by 
which it should be kept. 

I have dealt with this line somewhat formally 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I9 

and at length because it has so utterly disap- 
peared from the text, in the relations which 
*'airy" gives it, that the whole weight of edi- 
torial authority is against me; and I am de- 
sirous of having it restored permanently. 

The only real "authority" in such a case is 
that of internal evidence. If we change "airy 
air, " we have not only lost the soft suggestion 
of that mild and dewy morning when the lion 
rose and shook himself, but we have given the 
actor's arm no medium to move in and no 
course to follow. The words "airy air" are 
susceptible of the most expressive flourish of 
a bandmaster's wand — so also of the motion- 
ing hand. But the ending "to air" is all too 
scant. 



SOUL AND DUTY 

King. Thou still hast been the father of good news. 

Polonius. Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege, 
I hold my duty as I hold my soul, 
Both to my God, and to my gracious king. 

(Hamlet, ii, 2, 45, Modern editions) 

I hold my dutie, as I hold my Soule, 
Both to my God, one to my gracious king. 

{Folios) 

The one of this last line, because it has proved 
impossible to construe it into any evident sense, 
has long been considered an error. Modern 
editions have substituted and for the original 
one of the Folios. Furness, acceding to the 
general opinion that one was an error of the 
early printers, makes the following comment 
in his Variorum: 

"Dyce (Strictures, etc., 187) truly says that 
the attempts to explain the error, one, of the 
Ff have proved unsuccessful." 

If we will only have regard for what Polonius 
naturally would say, both in respect of his 
character and the common sense of the case, 
it is not difficult to see that Shakespeare wrote 
the word one in this place. Polonius, with 
his usual way of making fine distinctions, comes 
before the king and says: — "I hold my duty as 
I hold my soul; both to my God, one to my 
gracious king." In other words, Polonius 
holds or owes both his soul and his duty to his 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 21 

God, whereas he holds but one of them, his 
duty, to his king. For it would be manifestly- 
absurd to tell a king that you owe your soul to 
him in the same sense that you owe it to the 
Creator. The king would not be very strongly 
convinced of your sincerity. The flattery 
would be too rank. Therefore Polonius' on<?, 
which makes this exception, would seem to be 
dictated by mere common sense. 

Polonius, who is not entirely a fool and is 
not intended as such, has assiduously built up 
for himself a character of wisdom, of weighty 
mentality and acute and subtle insight, and he 
has attained to a court office in that capacity. 
He is a diplomat, the king's professional ad- 
viser. As a matter of fact, however, the every- 
day run of afi'airs at court does not make very 
frequent call for his profound services; there is 
not enough occasion to keep his reputation 
with the king always to the fore. Therefore 
he is always watching for the smallest oppor- 
tunity to make an impression. His whole 
standing in life depends upon his keeping up 
the idea that his great insight makes him in- 
dispensable, and in lack of anything else to 
work upon, he seizes upon the merest trifles 
and handles them after the manner of the 
weightiest aff"airs. This habit has so grown 
upon him that in his old age it makes him a 
somewhat ridiculous figure — Shakespeare uses 
him in that capacity. Usually, as in the pres- 
ent case, his duties make of him little more 



22 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

than a sort of sublimated office boy carrying 
a message, and when he expands such service 
into the most sapient achievement and works 
in at the same time the highest declarations of 
loyalty, it makes him laughable and frequently 
such a bore that the queen has to remind him 
to tell, in direct plain language, what it is that 
he wishes to say. He is a travesty on the 
diplomatic cast of mind with its profundity, 
insincerity and wire-drawn distinctions. Po- 
lonius' anxiety to make an impression is a point 
of character which Shakespeare is always keep- 
ing before us. With regard to this line, there- 
fore, that rendition must be correct which 
carries this point in the depiction of character. 
If we change it so that it loses its exceedingly 
logical, closely reasoned point and its involute 
construction, we have lost what Shakespeare 
wrote. Besides which there is the apposition 
between one and both, 2l method that is char- 
acteristic of Shakespeare's work throughout. 
The amended text loses all this. In short it is 
one which makes good sense while and does 
not. Substitute the latter and look at the 
statement closely. Besides being too tame 
and flat for Polonius, the whole statement be- 
comes loose and uncertain. 

But there is a more important point. The 
passage as a whole is a study in the art of 
flattery. Shakespeare has kept in mind cer- 
tain subtle truths regarding human nature, and 
by choosing Polonius to put them in practice 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 23 

he has kept the wily and doddering old diplomat 
delightfully in character. There are certain 
fundamental facts in human nature which I 
would advise anyone to study who wishes to 
become an adept in the art of flattery. 

First. If you wish to flatter anyone in 
reality, you must seem to be telling the truth; 
and no form of truth-telling is so convincing 
as that of making reservations. Nothing gives 
the appearance of honest truth-telling so much 
as the taking of a statement that, upon second 
thought, you find too large for exact verity and 
then trimming it down conscientiously to the 
size of the truth itself. For there truth-telling 
is a complicate matter which goes on in the 
open; the conscientiousness is evident. And 
if the reservations would seem, from the teller's 
private point of view, to detract^ candidly, from 
the importance of the other person, the state- 
ment becomes all the more effective as flattery, 
for he must indeed be an honest soul who would 
go so far as openly to take away anything from 
his meed of praise. It is important however 
that this seeming detraction should not, as a 
matter of fact, be any detraction at all. Po- 
lonius, by his way of putting it, very con- 
scientiously denies the king a certain power of 
possession over him. He does not owe his 
soul to him. That he owes to his God. It 
would seem, to the person addressed, that 
anything so conscientious, even at the risk of 
coming close to detraction, could not be in- 



24 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

spired by any mere motives of flattery. Po- 
lonius has thought aloud, as it were, and his 
honest mind has produced this reservation. 
And yet the reservation is, in fact, no detrac- 
tion at all, for what King could possibly object 
to a man's owing his soul to his God ? 

Second. The mood of abstract, or im- 
personal, thought, is the best soil out of which 
flattery can spring. For abstract impersonal 
thought is wholly engaged upon a question — 
something entirely aside from the mere person 
of the party under consideration. Flattery 
would therefore seem to be far from the par- 
ticular state of mind. A fine distinction serves 
the purpose, for it is the very nature of con- 
scientious thought to observe distinctions and 
diff^erences. It is by making mental correc- 
tions and verbal qualifications that truth is 
arrived at. And so, when we have a character 
like Polonius, we may expect to see flattery 
swim in her own native element. What he has 
to say is really very simple — He owes his duty 
to his king as he owes his soul to God. He 
starts out in a way that would seem quite 
spontaneous and natural — I owe my duty as 
I owe my soul; and right there he sees the force 
of having a mental qualm and making, for the 
king's edification, a most conscientious dis- 
tinction. His abstract and well-pondered rev- 
ery has been given, also, a very religious turn — 
not a small point in impressing the king with 
his incorruptible veracity. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 25 

When Ophelia, even in her insanity, says 
"You must wear your rue with a difference," 
she is a true daughter of the Polonius family — 
always observing differences and making fine 
distinctions. 

Hudson, in adopting the reading and^ ex- 
plains his understanding of it by a paraphrase 
— "I hold my duty both to my God and to 
my king as I do my soul." After reading this 
explanation one would be justified in inquiring, 
Holds his soul to whom? It is difficult to make 
consistent sense out of and; and the more one 
contemplates it as the substance of a Shake- 
spearean remark the more hopeless it appears. 
The First Folio, besides offering the proper 
sense, is even correctly punctuated to enforce it. 

In 1st Henry VI, iii, 4, 12, we have : First 
to my God and next unto your Grace — an 
interesting parallel. 



THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 

Scene I. An apartment in the Duke's palace. 
Enter Duke, Escalus, Lords and Attendants 

Duke. Escalus. 

Escal. My lord. 

Duke. Of government the properties to unfold, 
Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse; 
Since I am put to know that your own science 
Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice 
My strength can give you: then no more remains, 

But that to your sufficiency 

as your worth is able. 

And let them work. The nature of our people, 

Our city's institutions, and the terms 

For common justice, you're as pregnant in 

As art and practice hath enriched any 

That we remember. There is our commission. 

From which we would not have you warp. 

(Measure for Measure, i, i, 8, Modern editions) 

Then no more remains 
But that, to your sufficiency, as your worth is able 
And let them work. 

{First Folio, 1623) 

The vacancy indicated by the row of dots 
does not occur in the original editions of Shake- 
speare. The passage is thus printed by modern 
editors upon the theory that part of the text is 
missing. Many attempts have been made to 
fill out the supposed lacuna by conjecture, but 
as none have proved successful, the most 
approved practice is to indicate a loss in the 
text. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 2/ 

As this hitch in the hnes occurs at the very 
opening of the play, it has been the cause of 
much perplexity. Henry Irving said: "'This 
clause in the Duke's first sentence has proved a 
more awkward stumbling block to commenta- 
tors than almost any passage in Shakespeare." 
It is one of the four passages in all the plays 
which Neilson particularly notes as "hope- 
lessly corrupt." The Globe editors have 
marked it with the obolus according to their 
explanation in the preface: "Whenever a 
lacuna occurs too great to be filled out with any 
approach to certainty by conjecture, we have 
marked the passage with an obolus (f) ". 

What we need here is some thought upon 
the play as a whole. "Measure for Measure" 
is a play which deals with the nature of govern- 
ment. Being a product of Shakespeare's riper 
years, it has behind it much deep and thor- 
oughgoing thought upon the problems which 
confront society as a whole. In the outcome 
Shakespeare emphasizes the fact that though a 
government may have any number of laws, 
true justice and the pubhc welfare are, after 
all, dependent upon the character and insight 
of those who hold the reins of authority. 

In a good public officer three things are nec- 
essary — power, intellect and character. A 
man may have great intellectual ability but it 
will avail him little in a public position if he 
have not the authority or power to put his ideas 
into practice. On the other hand, a man may 



28 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEAR.E 

be in a position of absolute authority and have 
any amount of brains, and yet his influence 
for good will still be dependent upon his moral 
character — his personal nature or "worth" as 
Shakespeare calls it; for it is this quality which 
is needed to temper his administration with 
high beneficent aims and a deep sympathetic 
insight of human weaknesses and needs. This 
inner personal government, which is as strict 
with itself as it is with others, and which looks 
its own shortcomings in the face, is necessary 
to guide the intellect and make the authority 
of good effect. 

As I wish to oflPer this to the reader as a 
recognized truth, and not a mere interpreta- 
tion of Shakespeare upon my part, let us take 
our information upon government from a 
great political economist of today. Nearest at 
hand, as I write, I find Outlines of Economics 
(1893) by Richard T. Ely of the University of 
Wisconsin. On page 293 he lays down broadly 
"The Nature and State of Public Activity." 
After remarking that something more is needed 
than mere selfish interest to make a successful 
government, he lays down the following axiom 
(the italics being his own) : 

"We must add tlie social nature, teaching 
men to act in concert; the intellectual nature, 
teaching them to act consciously; the moral 
nature, teaching them to act rightly." 

When we remember that people act in con- 
cert in order to have power, it will be seen that 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 29 

this all corresponds to the three requirements 
which I have mentioned. In a democracy, the 
people must have these qualities in order to 
choose officers rightly; in a monarchy, such as 
Shakespeare is considering, these must be the 
qualities of the ruler himself if government is to 
prosper — power, intellect and character. 

Now if Shakespeare is writing a drama which 
deals with the problems of government, and if 
he has given deep and able consideration to 
his theme, we may expect him to keep strictly 
in view this fundamental truth. Let us see 
whether he does. 

The first scene opens with the venerable 
Escalus stepping upon the stage and the Duke 
coming in to confer with him. As the Duke 
steps into view we see that he bears in his 
hand two rolls of parchment — "commissions" 
(see lines 14 and 48). These important-looking 
documents are intended to catch the eye and 
arouse our curiosity at once: They represent 
the power which the Duke is going to confer 
upon Escalus and Angelo, each in his respec- 
tive station; and the conferring of this power is 
the particular business of the opening scene. 
The Duke in a few words makes it clear that 
Escalus is a man of great experience and 
ability, his "science" of government being so 
great that the Duke considers advice un- 
necessary. Escalus' mental equipment, as thus 
described, is shown to be sufficient. But how 
about the other qualifications.? The Duke is 



30 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

about to confer the power. He selects one of 
the commissions by which authority is to be 
conferred and bringing it more prominently 
into view he says to Escalus : 

"Put that (the power), to your sufficiency 
(your experience and mental ability) as your 
worth (your character or moral nature) is able, 
And let them work." 

Shakespeare here speaks plainly of the three 
things which always have determined, and 
always must determine, the true success of a 
public officer. And this trinity of qualifica- 
tions we now have split up and separated by a 
row of dots upon the supposition that part of 
the text is missing and that something comes 
between! This could only be because editors 
and commentators have failed to see, in these 
opening lines, Shakespeare's prompt announce- 
ment of the theme of the play as a whole. Noth- 
ing has been lost out of this line. Nothing 
could be added without spoiling it. It is the 
exact truth of government. To split it up 
with rows of dots puts an understanding 
reader entirely astray. 

It will be observed that I have emended 
the first word by changing the B to P. It is 
very easy for a typesetter, in distributing type, 
to throw a h into the p box; and such a mis- 
chance would result in an error like this. In 
any modern edition, the original text, which 
was very faulty in type-setting, has been 
corrected in more than ten thousand places. I 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 3 1 

think that when we view this Hne in the hght 
of what it is saying, the present emendation 
will be found as authoritative as any of them. 

In fact this very mischance (the throwing of 
a p into the h box) has been known to change 
the text of Shakespeare in comparatively 
recent times. For generations, up to the time 
of Knight, a certain line in "Troilus and 
Cressida" was printed, "thou art here put to 
thrash Trojans" (ii, 2, 50). This however was 
incorrect, for the First Folio had it, "thou art 
here but to thrash Trojans." For years, 
through edition after edition, the alteration in 
the text was not noticed. This is a thing 
which frequently happens in typesetting; and 
it probably accounts for the "But" in the place 
where, as I believe, Shakespeare wrote Put. 

This emendation, which I merely suggest, 
may be adopted and it may not; it is not the 
important point. The point is that we should 
understand what is being said here and grasp 
it in its larger aspect as related to the play as a 
whole. If we do this we cannot allow this line 
to be disrupted by a row of dots upon the 
supposition that it is the meaningless remainder 
of a lost passage. 

There can be no doubt as to the sense in 
which each word is intended to be taken. 
The meaning which we are to gather from 
Escalus' "sufficiency" is carefully tended to in 
the two preceding lines. It consists of Escalus' 
profound "science" of government, his mental 



32 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

equipment; and the word "sufficiency" refers 
back to that meaning. Power is being con- 
ferred upon him by the commission or parch- 
ment; and his "worth," by being mentioned as 
distinct from his intellectual equipment and 
his authority, can only mean his moral nature 
or character. The significance of the words, 
besides carrying their meanings in themselves, 
is made very exact by their apposition; and it 
will be noted that the greatest weight is put 
upon the moral qualification by the word 
chosen to express it — "worth." "Suflaciency" 
is merely that which suffices; it is enough in 
its kind. This is the word chosen to express 
Escalus' great intellectual attainments. Now 
this serves to throw our principal attention 
upon what is called his worth — a much larger 
thing. 

The passage as a whole makes temporal 
power and intellectual power wholly dependent 
upon a man's moral nature, or intrinsic worth, 
for good results. Now this is just what the 
play shows us in the end. Angelo failed, with 
Escalus as chief adviser, not because he was 
not a good reasoner, or inexperienced, or be- 
cause he lacked power, but because his moral 
nature was at fault. 

As to the acting of this opening scene. In 
the opening scene of a play, where the action 
may not rise to any great height because there 
cannot be the accumulated interest to build up 
a tense situation, a dramatist has to use great 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 33 

art to arouse interest at once. There is need 
of clever "stage business" to catch the attention 
and start something of interest at once. Shake- 
speare makes subtle use of these official-looking 
parchments — documents no doubt be-sealed 
and beribboned to make them seem important. 
They enchain the attention at once. We find 
that he soon reveals the nature of one of them, 
not in mere statement but dramatically: 

Put that to your sufficiency, as your worth is able, 
And let them work. 

He does not hand it over and designate it as 
a "commission" till four lines later, meantime 
he holds it before him and indicates it thus as 
being important. The Duke still has one left, 
and Angelo is now called in. 

Theobald (1733) emended the passage — 

then no more remains 
But that to your sufficiency (you add 
Due diligency) as your worth is able 
And let them work. 

As if such details as "due diligency" were not 
included in the larger meaning of the line! 
Such emendation is not warranted; but Theo- 
bald's fame is still of such power that this 
emendation is still used in widely-read editions. 



THE KING AND THE BODY 

Hamlet. The body is with the king, but the king is 
not with the body. The king is a thing — 

(Hamlet, iv, 2, 29) 

I CAN best convey the meaning of these words 
by a series of mental steps. The sentence is 
very delusive; it was intended to be so by 
Shakespeare. As Rosencrantz was supposed to 
see nothing but pure nonsense in such a state- 
ment, being too shallow to understand Hamlet, 
it was necessary for Shakespeare to put the 
sentence in such a form that it would appear 
the same to us, at first blush; thus we should 
see how perfectly insane it seemed to the two 
king's-messengers. At the same time its mean- 
ing is perfectly open, and was intended to be 
open by Shakespeare, to those who had the 
feeling and insight to understand Hamlet. 
Let the reader exercise a little patience, there- 
fore, if at first he does not catch it. Afterwards 
I shall explain what relation it bears to the 
play as a whole. 

The idea that Hamlet is here expressing is as 
follows : 

To a dead man, a king does not exist. The 
king has no being, is nothing, to a dead man, 
because the dead man is not conscious of him. 
But to a live king, a dead man does exist. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 35 

Which is to say: 

To a dead man, a king is not. But to a Hve 
king a dead man is. 

Or, in other words: 

With the king, a body is. But with the 
body a king is not. 

Or, to use Hamlet's exact words: 

The body is, with the king. But the king 
is not, with the body. 

It is all a matter of being, this question of is. 
And consciousness is what being consists of, 
or life. 

The reader will at once be reminded of the 
soliloquy: — "To be or not to be." It is all of 
a piece with this, even as the play in its deeper 
aspects, is all of a piece. Let us turn now to 
the soliloquy. 

The whole soliloquy, "To be or not to be," 
is engaged solely with the subject of forgetting. 
That is to say, not with mere death, as ordi- 
narily understood, but with oblivion. Hamlet's 
one great desire was to forget. The only way 
to forget is to die. Hence his contemplation of 
suicide. 

There is but one thing that stays his hand 
from self-destruction. It is the question as to 
whether, after death, there may still be con- 
sciousness. And therefore memory of things 
in this life. For if he must remember in the 
future life, his heart must still ache; and in that 
case there is no escape in that direction, no 
inducement in dying. It was not merely his 



36 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

life that Hamlet would wish to destroy, but 
his being. 

To die; to sleep; — 
To sleep? Perchance to dream! Ay, there's the rub. 

There indeed was the rub to a man with his 
reasons for dying. His impelling reason for 
wanting to die is stated at once, first and fore- 
most. It is *'the heartache and the thousand 
and one natural shocks that flesh is heir to." 
By "natural shocks" he means the shocks to 
his very nature — his heart and aflPections and 
ideals. He had had a terrible insight of the 
possibilities of human nature. Life had touched 
him to the quick on all four sides — through 
father, mother, sweetheart and friends. He 
had a father whose own brother had murdered 
him, a mother guilty of incest, a sweetheart 
who proved shallow and conventional in her 
love, boyhood friends equally vain and shallow 
who would spy upon him through selfish 
motives. All this came upon him suddenly; 
and being a man of high mental power it gave 
him a terrible insight of the world as it is. So 
long as he could remember these things and 
these people, his heart must ache. The only 
remedy is oblivion. 

In mere "action" there is no remedy for 
such things. They are simple facts; and of 
such facts his life must consist, no matter what 
he does or how successful he might be. It is 
often wondered why he did not kill the king, 
console himself with "revenge" and then aspire 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 37 

to his father's throne. And then what, let us 
ask. To be a king and live a life of such mem- 
ories! Such insights! -^ 

When there is no remedy for a state of affairs, 
what can a man ask but to forget it all? 

We cannot too tacitly fix upon our minds 
that in this part of the soliloquy Hamlet is 
wholly concerned, not with any dread of dying, 
but with the question as to whether memory 
persists after death. This is important to our 
understanding of the play inasmuch as it af- 
fects his course of action and shows his trend 
of thought. 

It is next important for us to gather the exact 
meaning of those lines: — 



Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer 
The sUngs and arrows of outrageous fortune 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And by opposing end them. 



There is here no thought or intention of 
setting to work to straighten out mere affairs 
at court. A man cannot take a dagger to the 
shallowness of mother, sweetheart and friend; 
he cannot kill the crime of his father's brother 
by simply killing the man. The memory and 
the facts are left; and life to him must consist 
of that painful insight and knowledge of the 
world. Shakespeare here speaks of ending 
troubles immediately and at once by merely 
taking arms against them. This means simply 



3^ SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

the taking of arms against self — suicide; for 
not by any such opposition to others could his 
troubles be conquered. But by death, if it 
brings oblivion, the dagger can conquer all. It 
might be easy enough to kill a king. But the 
only way to really wipe a man out of existence 
is to kill yourself. 

In this soliloquy, there is not the least hesita- 
tion over the fact that self-destruction may be 
against the law of heaven. It was in the earlier 
soliloquy that he gave thought to such matters 
— before the whole state of affairs had been 
revealed to him. Here there is nothing of that. 
He is wholly concerned with the hope that 
death may end all. Shakespeare has eliminated 
everything to bring forth in all its depths this 
one desire. And so the prime concern of this 
soliloquy is that of forgetting. 

With this too short view of the soliloquy, we 
are in a position to return with a new eye to 
the "crux" with which we began. The ac- 
cepted view with all modern authorities is that 
these words are "intended as nonsense"; or, 
as the Globe editors say, "Hamlet is talking 
nonsense designedly." But let us look at the 
facts. 

Hamlet inadvertently, and not caring much 
what he did, had killed Polonius and hid the 
body under the stairs. In this juncture the 
messenger comes to him from the king and says, 
"You must tell us where the body is, and go with 
us to the king." Immediately there arose in 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 39 

Hamlet's mind, in logical connection, the 
image of a king and a dead body, and with it 
the one idea that concerned him personally. 
In his life he had two courses open to him. 
One was to occupy his time with overcoming 
the usurper and trying to place himself on his 
father's throne; the other was to turn the 
dagger against himself and get relief from that 
heartache which, in any case, would be his for 
life. Situated as he was, he might become 
either a king or a dead body. They were the 
only two logical courses open to him. In the 
present juncture of his life there was suddenly 
and vividly presented to his contemplation a 
dead body on the one hand and a king on the 
other; and the messenger had said '*You must 
tell us where the body zV." This matter of "is, " 
in connection with a dead body, raises up to 
contemplation the whole mystery of being. It 
is the old question of, "to be or not to be," and 
Hamlet's mind, with the concrete presentment 
before him, returns at once to the question that 
most deeply concerns him. His remark upon 
the subject is quite natural. To the king, the 
body is. But with the body the king is not. 
And back of his remark was the thought that if 
he were a dead body, nobody would be now 
saying to him, "Go with us to the king." The 
hypocritical and hollow king, the corrupt court 
and the whole painful state of affairs would be 
wiped out of existence so far as he is concerned 
— a thing much to be desired. It seemed so. 



40 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

for the moment; and he said what he thought. 
But the mystery of death still remained; and he 
had probably decided that "it is nobler in the 
mind" to suffer and try to do something than 
to desert the field of action. 



THE SUM 

Enter a Messenger 

Mess. News, my good lord, from Rome. 
Antony. Grates me: the sum. 

Cleo. Nay, hear them, Antony. 

(Antony and Cleopatra, i, i, i8) 

The generally accepted interpretation of 
Antony's "the sum" is that he is ordering the 
messenger to sum up the news shortly. Im- 
patient of interruption he exclaims that it 
"grates" upon him and then demands the news 
from Rome in a nutshell. 

This is a misconception. Antony's words, 
"the sum," are in answer to Cleopatra's fore- 
going inquiry as to ''how much" he loves her. 
She has been insisting upon an answer to that 
question, but just when Antony is beginning 
to expatiate upon that pleasant theme, the 
messenger arrives and interrupts him. Vexed 
at this untimely obtrusion he waves the mes- 
senger aside and at once resumes his reply to 

Cleopatra. "The sum ", he begins; but 

before he can tell her the amount of his love he 
is again interrupted, this time by her. The hne 
should be printed with a dash after it to indicate 
that he has begun a sentence which is broken off. 

At first blush it might seem that the usual 
interpretation of the passage is as good as the 



42 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

one I am submitting. We must, however, 
look at the context. If Antony, the triple 
pillar of the world, commanded a man to sum 
up his message quickly, it is safe to say that he 
would make some attempt to do so. But the 
messenger does not respond. Then, too, if 
Antony is here supposed to be asking for the 
sum of the news he must have some intention 
of listening. But Cleopatra immediately says, 
" Nay, hear them, Antony." He not only shows 
no indication of having made such an inquiry 
of the messenger, but he continues to ignore his 
presence even when Cleopatra tries later to get 
him to give audience. Thus the accepted un- 
derstanding of the line produces such a state 
of affairs that in order to assent to it we have 
to have no regard for human nature. This is 
un-Shakespearean. 

On the other hand, if Antony is replying to 
the question *'how much," it is quite natural 

for him to begin, *'The sum ". As soon as 

he began, Cleopatra saw that he was addressing 
her and not the messenger; it is for that reason 
that she breaks in, "Nay, hear them, Antony." 
And the messenger says nothing because he saw 
that he simply was not wanted. 

Difficulty with this passage, which began 
with the earliest editors, has resulted in con- 
tinual efforts to repunctuate it; but always with 
the one preconceived meaning in view. In 
addition to the suggestions I have made I would 
separate the two halves of the statement, as at 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 43 

present printed, with a period, thus showing 
their complete detachment from one another, 
and indicate them as being addressed to the 
Messenger and Cleopatra respectively. 

The opening scene of this play is all bent to 
the purpose of impressing upon us Antony's 
complete infatuation and obsession with the 
charming Egyptian. Therefore, at the very 
beginning, we see him ignoring state affairs 
entirely — not partially or with a divided mind. 
This is brought out most strongly in the line we 
are considering; it was Shakespeare's strongest 
point in calculating the opening. We should 
not, therefore, be willing to consider Antony as 
consenting to pause in his courtship and lend 
one ear to the news, as it were, providing it 
was summed up or made short. 



ROPES IN SUCH A SCAR 

Diana. I see that men make ropes in such a scar. 
That we'll forsake ourselves. Give me that ring. 

(All's Well, iv, 2, 38, Globe ed.) 

This is one of the four passages in all the 
plays which Neilson especially signalizes as 
*^ hopelessly corrupt.^' 

An appalling list of proposed emendations, 
beginning with^Rowe in 1709, shows the efforts 
of successive editors and critics to wring a 
consistent meaning out of the passage. At 
present the attempts seem to be exhausted, 
and hope of solving the meaning has been finally 
given up. The Globe editors mark the passage 
with the obolus to signify its hopelessness. 

I have already explained, in my elucidation 
of ^'runaway's eyes^" that a girl who is about 
to give up that condition of maidenhood which 
has been her very state of existence might 
naturally feel that she was a deserter. Diana's 
way of expressing it is that she is about to for- 
sake herself. For as she is a maid, and this 
maidenhood is her very self, to voluntarily 
cease to be one is to forsake the Diana that she 
is. The Itahan Diana's deeper feehngs as she 
decides to do so may be seen through the eyes 
of any woman. Woman is her own keeper; 
it is herself that she has been trusted with. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 45 

Chastity, her first duty and ideal, is nothing 
less than a Cause to which she is sworn; she 
must not desert it despite the world. There- 
fore, that which a maiden is, and which she 
has always persisted in being, is her self in the 
truest sense of the word, for it is the very stuff 
of her conscious existence. It is what she is in 
the world. And so Diana, as she put forth 
her hand to accept the ring from such a man 
as Bertram (who was already married to 
another) felt that she was truly forsaking her- 
self. She would no more be the girl she was. 

It is probably unnecessary to dwell further 
upon this point of view — Shakespeare's ex- 
pression of it is sufficient. The circumstances 
being understood and the meaning of this word 
fixed, it now devolves upon us to explain, if 
possible, the figure of speech by which Shake- 
speare wished to make it all more forceful and 
vivid. And as to what a "scar" is, or scaur 
(formerly spelled scarre) there ought to be no 
great doubt about that, especially in the light 
of the context. 

"Scar — A bare and broken place on the side of a mountain, 
or in the high bank of a river; a precipitous bank of earth." 
— Webster's Dictionary (1890). 

We are all supposed to understand Tennyson 
easily enough when he writes: 

O, sweet and far, from cliff and scar, 
The horns of elfland faintly blowing. 

In Shakespeare's day we find it spelled 
"scarre," and so his conception of the word 



46 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

was no doubt related to the French escharre; 
and this means "a dry slough" or ravinelike 
place worn out by the action of water. It 
only remains, then, for us to take this simply 
worded passage and lend our imagination to 
what Shakespeare is saying. A figure of 
speech, we sometimes need to remind our- 
selves, has two sides to it. It is a little alle- 
gory, a fable in a word or two; it is an idea, 
a feeling, illustrated by a mental picture. And 
in Shakespeare's mind these pictures were 
always vividly conceived and exactly fitted to 
the parallel case. 

Let us, then, imagine the coast of England. 
It is a shore faced by steep cliffs like those at 
Dover; and at the foot of these walls of Eng- 
land is the long smooth strip of strand — "the 
unnumbered sands" of the shore. A distance 
from shore, anchored in the offing, is a ship; 
and walking along the shore is a sailor, now 
left to an hour of Hberty, who belongs to the 
ship. On the face of the cliff, here and there, 
are ropes by which samphire gatherers go up 
and down. Egg-gatherers sometimes come 
here, too, and fishermen and beach-combers; 
and the way from the long stretch of beach 
where "the unnumbered, idle pebble lies," up 
to the general level of the country is often by 
means of ropes. They hang down in plain 
sight on the bald face of the cliff. As the 
sailor wanders along he comes to where there 
is a scar or gully. In this dry gully, secluded 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 47 

in its depths and quite shut off from view, he 
comes across temptation itself. A rope shows 
him the way to desert his ship. Here is a se- 
cret place where he will be unseen; and some 
man has prepared the rope for him. In the 
preparedness of the thing he is tempted, forgets 
his articles to the ship and his duties of sailor- 
hood, and deserts. 

The only difference between such a one and 
Diana is that she is forsaking her maidenhood, 
her self — the thing that she is vowed to as a 
sailor to his ship. The importunate Bertram 
has been laboring by argument to overcome 
the difficulties of her own mind; he has been 
trying to assist her out of the barriers of her 
character. The arguments he weaves are the 
"ropes." Her relations with Bertram are 
secret; she is to deal with him by stealth. 
Secretly, away from the eyes of the world, she 
is to desert, or as she says, to "forsake" her 
maidenhood. In this pictorial passage the 
"scar" implies secrecy — a scar being a se- 
cluded place. 

Commentators have spent their utmost learn- 
ing and ingenuity arguing what a scar might 
be and what it is that Diana is supposed to 
forsake. When we see the word scar in con- 
nection with a rope it would seem that there 
could be little doubt as what sort of a scar it 
was; and still less as to what the rope was 
there for. 

While we should conceive Shakespeare's 



48 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

figures of speech as pictorially as our imagina- 
tion will allow, I do not mean to insist that 
the reader shall confine himself to the exact 
details I have used to bring forth the meaning. 
Shakespeare does not need to go into details; 
he touches off the imagination with the few 
vital words which will enforce the idea in its 
principal aspects. We should at least catch 
the spirit of the comparison and remember 
that woman is bound and circumscribed by 
the strongest barriers of custom and education 
and the very instincts of her finer nature to 
regard her womanhood as a trust, a thing to 
which she is bound as a nun to her convent or 
a sailor to his ship. I have said that the scar, 
being secluded, implies secrecy. It also de- 
picts a barrier, a place to be gotten out of; and 
Bertram, by his fine-spun arguments and logical 
ropes, is showing her the way out. When she 
says, therefore, 

I see that men make ropes in such a scar 
That we'll forsake ourselves 

she means that men contrive such opportune 
and secret places, and offer such specious argu- 
ments and easy ways to sin, that women are 
tempted to overcome the barriers of their na- 
ture and forsake their womanhood. The figure 
of speech is useful because it says so much in 
little. It has never been explained in this way 
before. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 49 

Commentators generally have been taken up 
with the problem as to what it is that is being 
forsaken; and many of them seem to think 
that it is the rope or the gully which women 
themselves forsake; though what these things 
stand for is not explained. Others think it 
ought to read "in such a scare" and ascribe 
the present reading to a mistake upon the part 
of the printers of the Folio. As the Folio, 
which is full of error in punctuation, prints the 
word ropes as follows — "rope's — many critics 
think that this stands for "rope us." The 
present-day state of aflPairs is shown in the note 
of Gollancz summing up the most plausible 
theories: 

"This is one of the standing cruxes in the 
text of Shakespeare; some thirty emendations 
have been proposed for 'ropes' and 'scarre'. . . 
The apostrophe in the First and Second Folios 
makes it almost certain that 'j stands for us. 
Possibly 'make' is used as an auxiliary; 'make 
rope's' would then mean 'do constrain, or en- 
snare us.' Or is 'make rope' a compound 
verb? ' Scarre' may mean 'scare' {i.e. 'fright'). 
The general sense seems to be 'I see that man 
may reduce us to such a fright that we'll forsake 
ourselves.'" 

Inasmuch as Bertram was the opposite of 
threatening, and used only the softest blandish- 
ment and persuasion, Gollancz's conclusion 
after considering all the attempts does not seem 
very fit to the actual case. It is difficult to see 



50 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

what Shakespeare would mean by writing " men 
make-rope us in such a scarre." 

There has been much cHnging to the apos- 
trophe in the word ropers because it is thus 
found in the First and Second Fohos; but this 
is due to the fact that no possible solution pre- 
sented itself and this seemed to offer a different 
way out, whatever it might signify. However 
we must remember that the Second Folio had 
no independent source; it was copied from the 
First Folio; and the First Folio has thousands 
of errors in punctuation which have been cor- 
rected without question. The fact that a mis- 
take has been copied does not lend it any 
authority, though many editors have seemed 
to reason that it does. The editor of the Sec- 
ond Folio was human; and, as he probably 
did not understand the line himself, he simply 
put down what he found in the First Folio. 

Following is a list of emendations, beginning 
with Rowe (1709): 

RowE — make hopes in such affairs. 

Malone — make hopes in such a scene. 

Becket — make mopes in such a scar, or make japes of such 
a scathe. 

Henley — make hopes in such a scare. 

Singer — make hopes in such a war. 

MiTFORD — make hopes in such a cause. 

Collier — make slopes in such a scarre, or make ropes in 
such a stairs. 

Dyce — make hopes in such a case. 

Staunton — make hopes in such a snare. 

Collier MSS. — make hopes in such a suit. 

Williams — may cope's in such a sort. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 5I 

BuBiER — make ropes in such a snare, or wake hopes in such 
a scare. 

Addis — may drop's in such a scarre. 

Fleay — make rapes in such a scare. 

Herr — make oaths in such a siege, or make loves in such a 
service. 

Lettsom — make ropes in such a scape. 

Bulloch — may crop's in such a scar. 

Deighton — may rope's in such a snarle. 

Daniel — may rope's in such a snare. 

Tyler — make ropes in such a scaine. 

Keightly — make ropes of oaths and vows to scale our fort 
in hope. 



ARMADO O' THE ONE SIDE 

Armado o' the one side, — O a most dainty man! 

To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan! 

To see him kiss his hand! and how most sweetly a' will swear! 

And his page o' t' other side, that handful of wit! 

Ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical nit! 

Sola, sola! 

(Love's Labour's Lost, iv, i, 146) 

This passage, in its entirety, has been very 
embarrassing to editors because it seems to 
have no connection with the scene in which it 
stands and of which it forms the conclusion. 
As it appears to be so irrelevant and foreign to 
the context, some editors, as Staunton, Halli- 
well and Rolfe, lift it from its present position 
and find a place for it in the preceding scene at 
line 136. But others, not finding that it fits 
here with any convincing aptness, prefer to let 
it remain where it is according to the original 
sources of the play. Armado and the Page, 
whom the clown seems to be characterizing, 
do not appear in the scene at all; hence there 
has been difficulty^ in determining upon what 
grounds the mind should take such a sudden 
jump. 

The trouble lies in the interpretation — not 
merely of words and phrases but of the working 
of the clown's mind. Costard is not talking 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 53 

about Armado and the Page primarily; he is 
soHloquizing about the nobleman Boyet who has 
just left. In order to appreciate Shakespeare's 
work in this place, it is necessary for us to call 
to mind the leading traits of certain characters 
in the play. 

The page, Moth, stands for quick-wittedness. 
He is a cogging and bantering juvenile who is 
always catching somebody in a verbal trap. To 
the simple-minded Costard he is the nonpareil 
of wits because he always succeeds in "putting 
down" others. In that respect he is Costard's 
delight: *'An' I had but one penny in the 
world thou should'st have it to buy ginger- 
bread." Costard wishes the boy were his 
"bastard" so that he might be blessed with so 
bright a son (v, i, 79). 

Armado, on the other hand, was a dandy 
pure and simple. He is all courtliness and 
clothes. But as to intellect, his mind is a mere 
collection of bizarre phrases and knightly no- 
tions by which he affects the much-travelled 
courtier and man of wars. To Costard he would 
naturally seem the very paragon of ladies' men. 

Now what sort of man is Boyet? He is the 
French nobleman who accompanied the Prin- 
cess and her ladies to England. The conductor 
of such a party is, of course, your complete 
ladies' man; and as we see in this scene particu- 
larly, he has a nimble wit in their playful en- 
counters with him. 

It is into one of these wit encounters that 



54 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

the simple-minded swain, Costard, finds him- 
self projected. It is a hunting scene consisting 
of the Princess and the ladies of her train. Ex- 
cepting the huntsman who acts as their guide, 
the only representative of the stronger sex is 
Boyet. But presently, in the midst of the 
play of wit, another son of man appears in the 
person of Costard who has been sent to deliver 
a letter, and it is not long until this interested 
spectator is putting in an occasional word of 
his own. And when Boyet gracefully with- 
draws from Maria's parting shot and Costard 
is left standing alone, he is mightily puffed up 
with the idea that he and the ladies have van- 
quished such a personage as Boyet. It is right 
in this connection that the stubborn passage 
comes. 

What Costard now does is very natural. 
Like all of us he wishes to set full value upon 
the qualities of the enemy, for thus we magnify 
our own prowess in the encounter. He there- 
fore sets about characterizing Boyet, who, as 
we have seen, is hoth a fine courtier and a wit; 
and it immediately appears to Costard that in 
putting down such a man he has outdone an 
Armado and a Moth together, all in one person. 
As his rustic mind has little facility in abstract 
characterization, he goes about it somewhat 
after the fashion of those who describe a neigh- 
bor as being a Jones o' one side of the family and 
a Smith o' t'other. Boyet is "Armado o' th' 
one side" and "his page o' t'other side." Such 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 55 

is the man he has worsted, a gentleman and 
a. scholar; and it is none the less humorous 
that he considers the specious Armado and the 
precocious Moth as the beaux ideals of the two 
qualifications, separately considered. 

Finally, having taken full account of the 
enemy and set him at a high value, he proceeds 
to look down upon him from his own point of 
view — the true formula for setting off our own 
superiority. Boyet may be all this, but as 
compared with Costard he is nothing — "Ah, 
heavens, it is a most pathetical nit! Sola, sola." 

A humble clodhopper like Costard naturally 
takes pride in being a connoisseur of that which 
he has not — bearing and brains, aristocracy 
and wit. The incident itself is funny in the 
connection in which it occurs, not to speak of 
the way it is worded. I think that future edi- 
tors should be careful to let the passage remain 
where it is in the Foho. The last lines of a 
scene are an important position with Shakes- 
peare. 



DEFECT OF JUDGMENT 

Belarius I am absolute 

'T was very Cloten. 

Arviragus. In this place we left them; 
I wish my brother make good time with him, 
You say he is so fell. 

Belarius. Being scarse made up, 
I meane to man; For defect of judgement 
Is oft the cause of Feare. 

{First Folio, Cymbeline, iv, 2) 

Clark and Wright and the generahty of 
editors today adopt Theobald's emendation 
"effect of judgment" for "defect of judg- 
ment." Those who have retained the "defect" 
of the original change cause to cure, Hke Hanmer, 
or to sauce, Hke Staunton, or loss, Hke Nichol- 
son, or cease, like Dowden. Or else, if they keep 
these two words of the Folio they change Is to 
As, like Knight. Of modem editors, Hudson 
changes defect to act, and the Elzevir edition 
puts fearlessness in place of fear. Altogether, 
commentators have not been able to see sense 
in the original text; and emendation has gone 
on continually because each editor has been 
equally unable to get satisfactory meaning out 
of the other emendations. After a great deal 
of this sort of effort, the best scholars have gone 
back to Theobalds' emendation — effect. 

At first I was very much puzzled to under- 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 57 

Stand why so many men of ability should think 
emendation necessary; but after I had read 
Knight's note I saw. They have beeinrying 
to straighten it out on the supposition that this 
passage refers to Cloten. This is a misconcep- 
tion; it refers to the young Guiderius, There 
has been a general failure to follow Belarius' 
drift of thought. A few words of explanation 
will, I believe, make the matter plain. 

The nobleman Belarius has for many years 
lived in hiding in the mountains, his home being 
a cave; and there he has brought up the two 
princes, Arviragus and Guiderius, from infancy. 
They are now strong, healthy-minded youths 
on the verge of manhood. 

One day, to Belarius' consternation, there 
appears in the vicinity of the cave a fellow 
from the court — Cloten. He is the new 
queen's son. This Cloten is a brainless, bla- 
tant, swaggering sort of a bull-calf of a man. 
He always expected an opponent to be cowed 
by his mere announcement that he was the 
queen's son; and he accompanied this self- 
importance with a seeming ripeness for fight, 
a bluster and abandon, which, to anyone who 
had no experience with human nature, would 
be very fearsome. 

By a turn of events the young Guiderius, 
who does not know Cloten, is left to cope with 
him while Belarius and Arviragus hurry away 
to look for other foes. Now, at the present 
point in the play these two are coming back, 



58 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

and Arviragus is beginning to have fears for 
his brother. He does not know how he may 
have fared in combat with Cloten. He says 
to Belarius, 

I wish my brother make good time with him. 
You say he is so fell. 

Evidently Belarius has said something, as 
they came along, which led Arviragus to con- 
clude that Cloten was a dangerous sort of man 
for his brother to encounter: "You say he is 
so fell." When Arviragus says this, Belarius 
sees at once that the boy has misunderstood 
his remarks. Cloten is not a dangerous man so 
far as bravery and swordsmanship are con- 
cerned; but he is dangerous to one who does 
not know him, because, being a blusterer and 
a "roaring terror," he has a way of putting an 
enemy into a fright before he starts to fight. 
All through the play we see that Cloten is that 
sort of wind-bag — a "roaring terror." He is 
not nearly as brave a man, nor as able a fighter, 
as young Guiderius; but Belarius, who knows 
Cloten of old, has been worrying, nevertheless, 
for he reasons that the boy, knowing little of 
human nature and never having come across 
a bully before, will be frightened by such 
bluster. The boys, not being cowards them- 
selves, naturally take such show of valor to be 
genuine; and so, when Arviragus remarks, 
"You say he is so fell," Belarius immediately 
explains, as best he can, just what it is that has 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 59 

been worrying him. His reply is substantially 
as follows: 

What I meant was that your brother, heaving 
spent all his life in the hiding place in the moun- 
tains, and knowing little of human nature — 
"being scarce made up, I mean, to man" — 
had no understanding of a loud-mouthed 
bully — "had no apprehension of roaring ter- 
rors" — for it is often the case that though a 
man is no coward a misjudgment of what is 
before him is the cause of fear — "For defect 
of judgment is oft the cause of fear." Guider- 
ius was brave and an excellent swordsman; 
but such an outlandish pretender, to a boy 
whose experience had given him no means of 
judging such people, might put him in a panic. 

I have here described the characters and the 
general situation and have quoted all the words 
of the refractory passage. As will be seen, I 
think, it is perfectly plain English. What, 
indeed, could Shakespeare write that would be 
more true to nature in this case? The trouble 
has been simply a failure to follow Belarius' 
natural course of thought. We should drop 
Theobald's unnecessary emendation, forget all 
about the commentators who have since 
worked over the supposed corrupt text, and get 
back to the exact words of the Folio. None 
of their emendations makes sense, and this does. 

Knight explains his own text: "In this 
reading of as for is, Belarius says that Cloten, 
before he arrived to man's estate, had not 



6o SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

apprehension of terrors on accou7it of defect of 
judgment, which defect is as often the cause of 
fear." Note that he thinks that the words refer 
to Cloten ^* before he arrived to mans estate." Al- 
though I am not writing essays on the plays, 
I probably ought to add, to make sure that 
there will be no further emendation, that my 
interpretation is organic. That is to say, it is 
the one which is required by the interactions of 
the play and its effect upon the spectators. 
When Guiderius comes in to meet the other 
two, and we find that he has not only killed 
Cloten but cut his head off, we are surprised — 
and not unpleasantly. But an audience also 
enjoys surprise upon the part of the characters 
on the stage; and this gives an interesting 
turn to Belarius' fears for the inexperienced 
boy. If we have understood what he said, we 
understand what a surprise it is to Belarius; 
and this is the effect which Shakespeare was 
(organically) engaged upon. 



IGNORANCE A PLUMMET 

Falstaff. Ignorance itself is a plummet over me. 

(Merry Wives of Windsor, v, 5, 172) 

Language is "fossil poetry," or, to put it 
more plainly, it is dead poetry. Our fore- 
fathers, the first talkers, had to invent ways of 
expressing themselves, and they frequently 
had to get around a new idea by means of 
comparison, live images, poetry in essence. 
We inherit these ready-made phrases; the fit- 
test survived; but we are so used to them that 
they are mere signs of ideas; we do not have to 
look them over curiously and inspect the com- 
parison in order to get the idea as would a man 
to whom it was said for the first time. A man 
speaking English does not think of the ety- 
mology, the derivation or poetic origin, of a 
familiar word. It is the same with our ready- 
made phrases as with words; we would no more 
think of looking into them and thinking what it 
is they are really saying than we would think of 
questioning why man means man. We already 
know the idea they stand for the moment 
they are said, and that is enough; but origi- 
nally that was not enough; they had to be lit- 
erally understood to catch the comparison or 
poetry. Thus language is dead poetry. It is 



62 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

dead because we are no longer alive to the 
meanings. Some of these original meanings 
have become so lost in the back recesses of the 
human mind that they are beyond recovery. 

For the sake of illustration, let us look in the 
face one of our everyday expressions — "He 
is sunk in the depths of ignorance." Why this 
"sunk" and why this "depths"? There was 
originally an allusion, a comparison to some- 
thing; and every figure of speech has two sides 
else it would fail of its very purpose. What 
mental picture, then, is it supposed to call up? 
It means of course that a man is very ignorant, 
but what was the exact vivid and visual con- 
cept which was supposed to come before the 
mind in order to enforce the meaning ? " Sunk " 
would naturally remind us of water as being 
the thing we usually sink in; and "depths" 
would seem to have the same allusion. It 
certainly had some tacit reference; and can 
it be that an ignorant man is depicted as one 
whose nature is such that he seems to be in a 
semi-darkness, as in the depths of water, and 
that he there sits in the obscurity and gropes 
around in the darkness of his own mind? Or 
possibly sunk in a strange unexplored pit be- 
neath the hght and "level of the average man? 
Such inquiries are so far from our everyday 
common-sense concern that they seem almost 
foohsh — especially to the unimaginative mind. 

But Shakespeare was not an unimaginative 
mind, nor an unthoughtful one. One of the 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 63 

most interesting phases of his work is his curi- 
ous interest in words with regard to their his- 
torical underlying poetry. The study of words 
is, in fact, a study in human nature and in psy- 
chology, for they tell interesting tales of the 
natural and fundamentally poetic mind; and 
to a poet and a worker in words it is all a matter 
to be deeply looked into. It is remarkable 
how often his ways of speech are simply current 
phrases put in different words to make them 
strike the mind anew; he had great confidence 
in the power of the original poetry of the mind. 
Most often, too, those allusions which we so 
easily call "puns" are a word-worker's curious 
interest in words per se. 

I have made the above excursion merely by 
way of getting the reader's mind out of the 
normal everyday mood for a moment and into 
a Shakespearean attitude. Shakespeare's fig- 
ures of speech are often so ingeniously fit that 
they illustrate more than we are accustomed to. 
It might be so in the famous obscurity "Igno- 
rance is a plummet" which let us now examine. 

When Shakespeare wrote this line he had a 
little problem before him, namely, to express 
not merely ignorance but extreme ignorance 
upon the part of Falstaff. It must have the 
humorous exaggeration characteristic of Fal- 
staff, but at the same time, when seriously 
viewed from Falstaff's standpoint, it must 
convey an idea of his extreme feeling of 
humiliation. Falstaff was ignorant; extremely 



64 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

ignorant. He was in fact worse than ignorant; 
so emphatically so that if Ignorance itself, 
ignorance absolute, were used as a standard 
of measurement, FalstaflF would be found lower 
down in the scale. 

Now how would Shakespeare go about ex- 
pressing this so that the figure of speech would 
have the definiteness and at the same time the 
atmosphere and feeling required.^ First he 
considered facts. We measure entirely by com- 
parison; therefore we have an established 
standard of comparison. In this case Ignorance 
itself, or ignorance absolute and to its final 
length of measurement, is the standard. And 
if the average man, familiar with ignorance 
itself, were thus to try to measure FalstafF's 
state of mind by comparison, FalstaflF would 
be so far down that that standard of measure- 
ment would not reach the place. 

The realm or atmosphere into which the 
comparison is put is in the deep obscurity of 
the sea — down there on the lowest level of 
things. And FalstaflF was feeling like an out- 
landish creature when he said it; he had been 
so egregiously humiliated. Therefore, if the 
average intelligent person, one of the general 
run of folks, wished to conceive his mental 
position, ignorance itself, let down into the 
depths like a plummet into the sea, would fail 
to reach the spot and give an idea of his sunken- 
ness. Ignorance itself, the standard of com- 
parison, would be "a plummet over me." 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 65 

Commentators, in struggling with this crux, 
have tried to see some aptness in the uses of a 
plumb-Hne as used by a mason to rectify and 
adjust. But plummet does not mean that in 
Shakespeare. It is not the name of the mason's 
tool but of the sailor's, and Shakespeare observed 
the distinction in his works. When he means 
the mason's tool he calls it a "line," as in the 
Tempest, where Trinculo says "we steal by 
line and level." That is to say, a mason then 
as today adjusted things with a line and bob, 
the latter being the lead on the end of the line. 
And when Shakespeare meant a plummet, a 
quite different thing as used for different pur- 
poses, he said so; as for instance in the Tem- 
pest — "I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet 
sounded," and "deeper than did ever plummet 
sound I'll drown my book." And so, entirely 
regardless of whether my explanation is accept- 
able or not, we have got to accept what Shake- 
speare says. Being a plummet, it is a matter 
of depth. The plummet proper is the piece of 
lead on the end of the line; and this it is, ac- 
cording to the statement itself, that represents 
Ignorance itself, which is over him. Nothing 
could be plainer; and if we can follow no far- 
ther it is for lack of Shakespearean imagination. 

The important point of the figure is that it 
is the average human being who is supposed to 
be measuring Falstaff; it is not Ignorance 
itself. The latter is only the standard of 
comparison, the plummet at its lowest. Philo- 



66 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

sophically it is a recognition of the fact that 
we measure by comparison. Psychologically, 
or in respect of the mind itself, the figure is 
very true; for the intelligent mind cannot de- 
scend to the level even of Ignorance; but being 
familiar with it he might try to measure Fal- 
staff's depth comparatively; and fail because 
Ignorance itself does not descend so low. 

Samuel Johnson was so baffled here that he 
came to the conclusion that the word plummet 
was an error; he thought it ought to be plume. 

The present state of conjecture is summed up 
in Professor C. F. Johnson's Shakespeare and 
his Critics (1909): "The exact meaning of this 
passage is obscure, but it is difficult to see how 
'plume' enlightens it. Falstaff may mean, I 
am so shallow that ignorance can sound me 
with a plummet, or, ignorance can hold a plumb 
line to rectify my errors. The difficulty lies 
in the word 'over.'" 

This last remark is to the point — the diffi- 
culty is in the word "over." And also, I might 
add, in the fact that "ignorance is a plummet 
over me." Holding a plumb-Hne and being a 
plummet are two different things. 



POMPEY 

Biron. Greater than great, great, great, great Pompey. 
Pompey the huge. 

(Love's Labour's Lost, v, 2, 691) 

A GREAT deal is lost here through the failure 
of editors to perceive what is being said. The 
line needs to be repunctuated in order to bring 
out the point of view. 

The passage occurs where the fun-loving 
companions of the French Princess and the 
king of Navarre are stirring up the clown Cos- 
tard to fight Armado the braggart. In the little 
theatrical entertainment which these vain- 
glorious and ridiculous characters have been 
presenting before the royal party, Costard has 
acted the part of Pompey while Armado has 
strutted forth as Hector. In order to get Cos- 
tard to take off his coat and fight Armado, the 
members of the royal party vie with each other 
in inflating his vanity still more. Printed as 
Shakespeare evidently wrote it, the line would 
come as follows: 

Dumain. Most rare Pompey. 
Boyet. Renowned Pompey. 

Biron. Greater than great. Great great great Pompey. 
Pompey the Huge. 

Besides making the words say the right thing, 
this accords with the Shakespearean art of 



68 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

writing. The first short statement of Biron's 
brings out at once the point of view, namely, 
that Costard is greater than Pompey the Great. 
The audience having now caught the idea, the 
egregious title of great-great-great rolls up 
with increasing ridiculousness as applying to 
the mock Pompey before us. It is a main 
point of literary art to have a sentence or pas- 
sage anticipate its construction or point of view. 
When anything requiring a slightly unusual 
point of view is to be conveyed, the art of an- 
ticipation is most important. The point of 
view is indicated at once, and then follows the 
richer unfolding. 

But the trouble with this line, principally, 
is that after you have held the words in mind 
and got to the end it has not said the right 
thing. As universally printed, the four greats 
are made to refer to the Roman Pompey him- 
self, than whom this mock Pompey is said to 
be greater. But Shakespeare did not intend 
to burlesque the historical Pompey. The ri- 
diculous and grandparent-like title was intended 
to come in such a way as to refer to our country- 
clown Pompey of the stage. And as to the 
other objection which I find here, Shakespeare 
understood his art too well to have an actor 
come forth and deliver that mere string of 
words — great, great, great, great. 

No particular editor or critic is responsible 
for the line as it stands. It has always been 
printed in this way. 



BRAKES OF ICE 

Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall: 
Some run from brakes of ice and answer none: 
And some condemned for a fault alone. 

(Measure for Measure, ii, i, 39) 

The central fact of this play is that Angelo, 
the strict judge, was as guilty as the man he 
condemned; or rather more so. But while 
Claudio had been apprehended Angelo's deeper 
misdeed had never been brought to light. The 
one was caught and the other was not. 

Hunting is done by two means, sight and 
scent. On ice it is difficult to hunt with hounds 
because ice will not retain the scent. In a 
brake it is impossible to hunt by sight because 
you cannot see nor make any speed if you did. 
Therefore, the most hopeless of all places to 
follow the fox or other beast of prey would be 
a frozen fen or a brake of ice. 

The law catches some culprits for little faults 
committed in the open and fails to hunt down 
crafty malefactors who have succeeded in hid- 
ing their trail. A fox in an icy brake might 
run from the place where he had eaten his prey 
and never be caught. 

The words of the passage have been changed 
in every conceivable way, but without success. 



70 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Possibly the above, which keeps the wording 
of the original and fits the general scheme of 
the plot, might be the solution. In the Globe 
it is marked with the obolus — hopelessly cor- 
rupt. 



THE TERRIBLE PISTOL 

Scene IV. The field of battle. Alarum. Excursions. 
Enter Pistol, French Soldier, and boy. 
Pist. Yield cur. 

Fr. Sold. Je pense que vous etes le gentilhomme de bonne qualite. 
Pist. Qualtitie calmie custure me! Art thou a gentleman? 
What is thy name? Discuss. 

(Henry V, iv, 4, 4) 

'Qualtitie calmie custure me'; probably Pistol catches the 
last word of the French soldier's speech, repeats it and adds the 
refrain of a popular Irish song, ' Calen, custure me' = 'colleen og 
astore,' i.e. 'young girl my treasure.' The popularity of the 
song is evidenced by the following heading of one of the songs 
in Robinson's Hanful of Pleasant Delights (cp. Arber's reprint, 
p. 33): 'A Sonet of a Lover in praise of his lady. To Calen o 
custure me; sung at euerie line' s end '; first pointed out by Malone. 
(The present-day interpretation as given by GoUancz) 

Pistol is simply doing his best to speak 
French, as follows : — Quel litre comme accoster 
me. This inquiry, if he had not got it garbled 
into semi-English, his French prisoner could 
easily enough have understood to mean. Tell 
me what your title is. This, as we see by the 
rest of the scene, is exactly what Pistol on the 
battlefield was interested in knowing. The 
whole scene is based on Pistol's anxiety to find 
out the title of any prisoner he might capture, 
whether of high or low degree, so that he might 
know how much ransom he would be able to 



72 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

get. Naturally, when Shakespeare brings this 
amusing episode before our eyes on the field of 
Agincourt, the very first words from Pistol's 
mouth would be intended to show this interest 
in names or titles. The endeavors of Pistol 
will be better seen if we print what he was 
trying to say in line with what he did say. 

Quel titre comme accoster me. 
Qual title calmy custure me. 

From our close acquaintance with the amus- 
ing Pistol in two plays we know his besetting 
vanity — words. He affected a bizarre and 
impressive manner of speech. However little 
he might amount to on the battlefield, there 
was nothing in the shape of language he would 
hesitate to undertake. Being an Englishman, 
his ear and mind would not accommodate 
themselves very easily to such a language as 
French. Its elusive shades of sound he would 
get into his mind in good round English terms. 
Hearing the word comme he would conceive it 
as calmy, for that is what it would naturally 
sound like to him; and so with the rest of the 
language. 

Pistol had heard the sonorous Frenchmen 
say Quel titre (what name) and his hold on it 
was very elusive and uncertain. And so, in 
this scene, when the French nobleman addresses 
him as a " gentil-homme de bonne qualite," he is 
influenced in his pronunciation by the latter 
word; especially as this was just the point he 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 73 

was interested in. By its having to do with a 
man's quality or title, he got Quel litre very 
comfortably Anglicized in his mind as qualtity. 
This would be natural. As the English speak 
of a man's position as his "quality," Pistol, 
going to France and finding that Quel litre 
meant what name or title^ would note the re- 
semblance to his own word for social standing, 
and the nearest he would come to French, with 
that in mind, would be qualtity; — which would 
be very much like French when a French- 
man pronounced it trippingly on the tongue. 
Shakespeare devised this passage and gave us 
the cue in this qualite just before Pistol's qual- 
litie in order to show us the English soldier's 
confused state of mind with regard to French. 
Like the rest of us. Pistol had an instinct to 
speak French in English. 

Shakespeare's audience at the Globe theatre, 
having seen Pistol in the Second Part of King 
Henry IV, would be familiar with his facility 
with high-flown speech — his prowess in words. 
He has a flow of bizarre grandiloquence second 
to no character in the plays except it be Don 
Adriano de Armado. And now to show him 
virtually tongue-tied — a mere babe in the 
matter of language with a boy to interpret for 
him — is about as funny a thing as could be 
done with Pistol. 

Malone's conjecture regarding this passage, 
which has been the regular interpretation ever 
since it was propounded in 1821, is open to very 



74 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

vital objections. It does not fit the character 
nor the demands of the situation. Why 
should an English soldier, who has captured a 
French nobleman and is all taken up with the 
idea of getting money from him, address him 
with the title of a tune, in Irish, which means, 
"young girl my treasure?" The theory upon 
which this is accepted is that Pistol considers 
this "as good as anything else" to say to a 
Frenchman. But Pistol was thinking of get- 
ting money, his mind was strictly bent upon 
that, and Pistol, whatever else he might have 
been, was no fool. He was greedy for spoils. 
Again, Shakespeare has a way of striking the 
keynote of a play or a scene in the very opening 
lines. This scene is taken up with Pistol's 
effort to find out this man's standing and scare 
as much money out of him as possible. Why 
then should not the opening line of the scene 
have to do with this? And besides, if Pistol 
was repeating the title of a tune in Irish, why 
does he not repeat the name of the "familiar" 
tune at all but something very different. What 
he says resembles the name of the tune in but 
one word. I think we must regard him as 
trying to speak French, especially as he makes 
a very fair attempt at it for an ignorant English 
soldier and says the very thing that the scene 
as a whole would require him to say. 



THE LIFE TO COME 

Macb. If it were done when 't is done, then *t were well 
It were done quickly. If the assassination 
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch 
With his surcease success; that but this blow 
Might be the be-all and end-all here, 
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time 
We'd jump the life to come. 

(Macbeth, i, 7, 7) 

The words hank and shoal do not refer to the 
same side of a body of water. They refer to 
two opposite sides of a stream, one side being a 
bank or bluff shore and the other a smooth 
slope of sand. The picture is that of a rider 
jumping his horse over such an obstruction. 
A horseman, in making a jump across a wide 
stream, prefers a place where the shore is 
slightly elevated on his own side and somewhat 
low and flat on the other — a bank and a shoal. 
If the reader will imagine a rider trying a wide 
leap toward a bluff shore, on the edge and slopes 
of which his horse will land athwart in case he 
falls short, he will readily see the reason for 
preparing a shoal of sand to light on. The ele- 
vation on his own side, of course, enables him 
to make a long jump. This same point of 
view applies to the passage which occurs nine- 
teen lines further on in regard to "vaulting 



76 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

ambition." Upon this basis I shall explain all 
the moot points in these two passages. 

Two scenes previous to this, at i, 5, 19, Lady 
Macbeth, speaking of her husband's ambition 
to become king, fears that it will not be in his 
nature to catch "the nearest way." This was 
the forerunner, in Shakespeare's mind, of a 
point of view which he was to work out in more 
striking form when the time for Macbeth's 
decision should arrive. 

The horseman presented to our imagination 
is a traveler. The goal of his ambition is in 
plain sight before him but a forbidding stream 
lies between himself and it. In riding along 
the shore a bank and shoal present themselves 
to his view. Here is an advantage; shall he 
take it or not? Being impatient to cross, he is 
disposed to make light of a risky jump. But 
on second thoughts and further view he realizes 
that his ambition is tempting him to spur his 
animal on to a leap which might have serious 
consequences. If a horse makes a leap beyond 
his ordinary ability, taking a wide downward 
jump so that he is unable to sustain himself on 
alighting, the results are likely to be disastrous. 
Here the man's confidence begins to desert him; 
he sees that he has more ambition than he may 
be able to carry out — 

I have no spur 
To prick the sides of my intent, but only 
Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself 
And falls on th' other — 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE ^f 

Why is this place called the bank and shoal 
of time? A horseman in such a case, with his 
destination plainly in view, and therefore very 
near to it in one regard, may yet be very far 
away from it as a matter of fact. He will have 
to follow along till he comes to some appointed 
way of getting over, a bridge, a ford or a fav- 
orable place to swim and make a landing. In 
this life our fond hopes and ambitions hold 
their objects very plainly before the mind's 
eye; but we have to follow down the obstruct- 
ing stream of time till our opportunity arrives, 
if ever. The actual horseman in this case 
would have to keep on till the time came to get 
across; therefore this stream, to all practical in- 
tents and purposes, is time. If he can manage 
to leap across it at once he is virtually leaping 
across so much time; therefore the bank and 
shoal between which his leap was made would 
be the bank and shoal of time. 

These two passages, which I have not yet 
quite fully considered, form a picture which 
serves as a lively and illuminating parallel to 
Macbeth's case. He believes thoroughly in 
the prophecy of the witches that he shall be 
king; both he and Lady Macbeth see the 
promised land before them; but it is a matter 
of time and very indefinite in that regard. 
Suddenly a bank and shoal presents itself; 
King Duncan comes to spend the night under 
their roof. It is an inviting advantage, though 
risky; if Macbeth kills the king his own future 



78 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

will have arrived at once. The opportunity 
enchains his attention and he expresses his 
conflicting emotions in the language of a horse- 
man — which Macbeth was. If he thought 
there would be no fatal consequences he would 
decide at once to "jump the life to come." 

This "life to come" does not refer to the 
hereafter as many critics have thought, at least 
not primarily. As he betrays no compunctions 
about the future, being wholly absorbed in his 
one ambition, this would be somewhat out of 
character. It means that he will jump right 
into the life of a king, which the prophecy has 
told him is sometime coming to him, and over 
the intervening time. 

Shakespeare scholars will recognize in these 
two passages a considerable source of trouble 
to past generations. On account of some eva- 
sive quality about the lines, there has been a 
signal failure to connect the two parts of the 
soliloquy as having any relation to each other, 
whereas they are part and parcel of the one 
mental picture. The lay reader who may now 
consider it too simple to require explanation 
will find by reference to annotated editions an 
interesting study in the psychology of Shake- 
spearean criticism. 



BADE THEE STAND UP 

But he that tempered thee bade thee stand up, 
Gave thee no instance why thou should'st do treason, 
Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor. 

(Henry V, ii, 2, Ii8) 

The obscurity which invests this passage 
has caused the words "tempered" and "stand 
up" to be a fruitful source of emendation and 
conjecture. The present-day understanding of 
Henry's remark is probably stated by GoUancz 
as well as any: 

"No emendation is necessary, the' it is uncertain what the 
exact force of 'bade thee stand up,' may be, whether (l) 'like an 
honest man,' or (2) 'rise in rebellion.'" 

From an examination of emendations from 
the time of Johnson, and the nature of the criti- 
cal query of today, it appears that critics have 
missed the idea that Lord Scroop is being re- 
garded by Henry as a devil's knight and do not 
realize what this implies. 

A knight practiced goodness just for the sake 
of goodness. He went about protecting the 
oppressed, assisting the helpless and fighting 
the battles of those who were wronged, and 
with no object whatever except to do good. 
Chivalry was the aristocratic flower of Chris- 
tianity; it was not limited to doing to others as 



8o SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

you would have them do to you, but went about 
aggressively doing good to the complete sacrifice 
of self. It was active goodness just for the 
ideal of doing good. 

A devil's knight therefore would be one who 
practiced evil just for the sake of being bad. 
He would be an entirely gratuitous and unre- 
warded miscreant — a man who did not even 
need an excuse for his badness. He would 
belong to the chivalry of evil. 

For King Henry to address Scroop from such 
a point of view would express his sentiments 
exactly. Henry was baffled to know why 
Scroop, who had been his most intimate and 
favored friend, should conspire against him 
and prove a traitor. The only possible view he 
could take was that Scroop was one of those 
natures that are gratuitously bad. This seemed 
to be so strongly the truth of the matter that 
Henry expressed it by the powerful image of a 
man who had been consecrated to evil deeds as 
a knight is consecrated to good ones. He was 
a devil's knight; and just as a Christian king 
might dub a knight by some fit and distinctive 
title, so the devil had dubbed him Sir Traitor. 

We are now in a position to answer the modern 
query as to the exact force of the words stand up. 

When a nobleman was raised to knighthood, 
it was the custom, after the king had struck 
him across the shoulders with the royal sword 
and dubbed him by his new name, to tell him to 
stand up. The practice shows itself in several 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 8l 

places in Shakespeare: "Iden kneel down. 
Rise up a knight," (2 Henry VI, v, i, 78). 
**I will make myself a knight presently. Rise 
up Sir John Mortimer," (2 Henry VI, iv, 2, 
128). Moreover, a man who espoused knight- 
hood in the Middle Ages did it out of emulation 
of renowned Christian examples and a regard 
for high religious principles; he would therefore, 
in being knighted, have recalled to his mind 
these great "instances" of reasons and examples 
for being a knight. Shakespeare, in depicting 
Scroop as a devil's knight, used these expressions 
"stand up," and "gave thee no instance," so 
that King Henry's shaft would be driven home 
with a still deeper irony. The devil, as the 
text says, did not need to do this with Scroop 
— such ceremonies were unnecessary in his 
case. The devil, seeing what sort of man he 
had before him, knew that Scroop would not 
need to be incited to deeds of badness by great 
examples of evil; he could be depended upon to 
do bad without reason or example. And so the 
devil simply struck him with the sword as he 
knelt and then said, "Stand up." That was 
all. In short, there was no use in his being 
knighted at all except that he aspired to the 
title — Traitor. 

Such words, addressed to Scroop, who was 
himself a nobleman and understood all that 
knighthood implied, would stab to the quick. 
He was guilty of the worst sort of traitorship — 
not only to his king but to his friend. Henry 



82 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

would naturally feel this bitterly; and so 
Shakespeare had to express it with adequate 
force. 

If the reader will refer to the text he will see 
that this passage is preceded by seven lines 
which speak of a "cunning fiend" who "got 
the voice in hell" for the way in which he 
wrought upon Scroop. This is generally under- 
stood, of course, as referring to a devil; but 
why this image has not been carried on by 
critics and applied to the continuing lines I do 
not understand. To be sure, there is no refer- 
ence to knighthood anywhere except as it is 
alluded to in these three lines by such words 
as "dubbed" and "stand up." There seems 
to have been a general failure to catch the es- 
sential idea as applied to the general circum- 
stances. All this Shakespeare conveyed in 
three lines. 

I might add that "tempered" is a figurative 
usage. The king struck the candidate for 
knighthood across the shoulder with his sword; 
it was at this moment that he became a knight. 
There is an implication that this sudden meta- 
morphosis is like the tempering of metal, which 
is changed by striking. In keeping with 
Shakespeare's word -use it also has, faintly and 
secondarily, its usual meaning of compound- 
ing or mixing ingredients, hence making. 



AY AND NO 

Lear. No they cannot touch me for coining. I am the king 
himself. 

Edgar. O thou side-piercing sight. 

Lear. Nature's above art in that respect. There's your press- 
money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper; draw 
me a clothier's yard. Look, look, a mouse. Peace, peace; this 
piece of toasted cheese will do 't. There's my gauntlet; I'll prove 
it on a giant. Bring up the brown bills. O well flown bird. I* 
the clout, i' the clout! Hewgh! Give the word. 

Edgar. Sweet Marjoram. 

Lear. Pass. 

Gloucester. I know that voice. 

Lear. Ha! Goneril, with a white beard. They flattered me 
like a dog, and told me I had the white hairs in my beard ere the 
black ones were there. To say "ay" and "no" to everything 
that I said! "Ay" and "no" too was no good divinity. When 
the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; 
when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found 
'em, there I smelt 'em out. Go to, they are not men o' their 
words; they told me I was everything; 't is a lie, I am not ague- 
proof. 

(Lear, iv, 6, 83) , 

The trouble in the above passage is the re- 
mark, *'To say 'ay' and 'no' to everything 
that I said! *Ay' and 'no' too was no good 
divinity." The traditional editorial note which, 
in lack of anything better, is still doing service 
in all annotated editions, is — "Let your com- 
munication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay." (Matthew 
5; 37). What this has to do with the sense 
here is never touched upon. It is just a con- 



84 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

jecture that this is the "allusion" — as if 
Shakespeare made allusions without any idea. 

When we understand Shakespeare's method 
of depicting insanity throughout his works, it 
is easy enough to see where Lear got this **ay'* 
and this "no," There had just resounded, in 
slow impressive tones, on Lear's irresponsible 
brain, the words — "I — know — that voice." 

Shakespeare, in depicting insanity, shows the 
mind as being the shuttlecock of chance sug- 
gestion. The songs of Ophelia have several 
features which would make an interesting illus- 
tration of this way of work; but for our present 
purpose it will be better to illustrate the point 
from the passage in which this "ay" and "no" 
occur. 

Lear calls for them to bring up the "brown 
bills," these being soldiers who carried halberds 
or bills which were painted brown to keep them 
from rusting. This "bills" reminds him of a 
bird, a falcon, and this immediately makes him 
think of a feathered arrow flying to its mark — 
"O, well flown bird" — and as the arrow hits 
the center of the target or clout the imaginary 
target-tender gives the "word" as to how 
the arrow flew; but immediately this "word" 
becomes changed in Lear's mind to the idea of 
a password, and so, when the wondering and 
grieved Edgar exclaims "Sweet miarjoram," 
Lear takes it for the call to the sentinel and 
answers rass. 

Here is a close-knit, if irrational, succession 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 85 

of ideas; they spring out of one another upon 
the mere suggestion of words — first one re- 
minder and then another. On the same prin- 
ciple, the "ay and no" conception was started 
up in Lear's mind by Gloucester's "/ — know — 
that voice." So also the ** Peace, peace," re- 
minded him of a "piece" of something — which 
for his present purposes happened to be cheese. 
The insane mind, in its highly imaginative 
form, is the prey of the least suggestion; and 
like the sane mind it moves easiest along the 
line of similarities, as in these cases. Next to 
ideas aroused by mere similarities of words, 
Lear's mind most easily enlarges upon an idea 
by thinking of its opposite. "There's your 
press-money." That moment he is thinking 
of war; he has enlisted or impressed a soldier, 
and the soldier does not draw the bow to suit 
him. Suddenly his mind jumps to "Peace, 
peace; this piece of toasted cheese will do 't.'* 
The very opposite of military power, brute 
force, is the small shrewdness of catching a 
mouse. From thinking of war he thought of 
peace, and the suggested "piece" furnished 
him with just what he wanted — something 
quite shrewd and the very opposite of war. 
Lear had been anything but shrewd all through 
his life; and the mind always likes to think 
itself that which it is not. But instantly there 
is a reaction and he is the old mandatory Lear 
who knows nothing but power — "there's my 
gauntlet; I'll prove it on a giant." And finally 



86 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

he ends with thinking himself very shrewd in- 
deed — "when the thunder would not peace 
at my bidding; there I found 'em, there I smelt 
'em out." This passage is a study of mind, 
character and personal history. The unbal- 
anced mind, as Shakespeare shows it, does not 
lack idea; it lacks continuity of thought. 

What idea, then, are we to get from these 
words, "To say 'ay' and 'no' to everything 
that I said! 'Ay' and 'no' too was no good 
divinity." This is a question which does not 
seem ever to have been satisfactorily answered. 
White queries, "Why should his knights say 
'ay' and 'no' to everything he said.^"' 

The first Foho has it: "To say I, and no, to 
every thing that I said: I, and no too, was no 
good divinity." The first Quarto reads : " saide, 
I and no toe, was," etc. Inasmuch as our 
modern reading is an editorial correction of the 
Folio, which is as usual punctuated at random, 
I think that if I were editing the play I should 
not long hesitate to adopt a suggestion made 
several generations ago: "To say ay and no to 
everything that I said ay and no to was no good 
divinity." 

Lear's one great lesson had been that his 
followers were self-seeking flatterers; they did 
not tell him the truth about himself. A man 
who will say ay or no to anything whatever, 
according as his interest lies, is simply a liar; 
and lying is no good divinity. A "clothier's 
yard " does not refer to a particular sort of yard 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 87 

as a standard of measurement; it is the distance 
from the tip of the nose to the end of the thumb 
when the arm is stretched out sidewise. A 
bowman who could draw a clothier's yard was 
one who, when the butt of the shaft was at his 
nose, had the strength to force the bow out the 
full length of the arm. While there is such a 
thing as a "clothier's yard" in measurement, 
it is no different from any other yard except 
in the way the yardstick is divided — and 
this, of course, is not the reference in speaking 
of the bowman's ability. An archer of size 
and strength had to have an arrow of such 
length that he could use it in this way; and so, 
when the "Ballad of Chevy Chase" (to which 
commentators refer) speaks of "an arrow of a 
cloth-yard long" it refers to this ability and not 
to a standard of measurement. I have added 
this note because Shakespeare notes and vo- 
cabularies seem undecided or evasive regarding 
the exact meaning. "Clothier's yard — a cloth- 
yard shaft was a term for the old English arrow.'* 
(Globe editors.) 



GRACE AND HIGHNESS 

Westmoreland. They know your grace hath cause and 
means and might; 
So hath you highness; never king of England 
Had nobles richer, — etc. 

(Henry V, i, 2, 126) 

Westmoreland addresses Henry V by his 
two titles separately. This puzzled Coleridge, 
who wrote: "Perhaps the lines ought to be 
recited dramatically, thus: 

They know your Grace hath cause and means and might; — 
So hath your Highness — never king of England 
Had nobles richer, &c." 

Hanmer, who was speaker of the House of 
Commons, amended to race; but Coleridge's 
explanation with the accent on hath and had 
became the standard acceptation. Knight used 
it (1843) but of later editors Staunton amended. 
He thought it necessary to change hath to haste. 
The exact idea here seems to be still clouded. 

"Grace" as applied to a king refers, of course, 
to the fact that he reigns by divine favor and 
guidance. "Your Grace" points upward to his 
relations to heaven; "Your highness" alludes 
to his earthly elevation as regards the rest of 
humanity. Shakespeare put them in this sep- 
arate and peculiar way in order to bring them 
out as words and emphasize them in their es- 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 89 

sential meaning; and he did this for a particular 
purpose. 

The wild Prince Hal, whom the audience at 
the Globe Theater had learned to associate 
with such company as FalstafF and Doll Tear- 
sheet and Mrs. Quickly and all that red-lattice 
crew, now comes forward in a new play, "Henry 
V." Prince Hal is king. Note how the play 
opens: — 

"The king is full of grace and fair regard," 
says the Archbishop of Canterbury talking 
privately to the Bishop of Ely. 

"And a true lover of the holy church," adds 
Ely. 

"The courses of his youth promised it not," 
continues Canterbury. 

"We are blessed in the change," reflects Ely. 

"Hear him but reason in divinity, and, all 
admiring, with an inward wish, you would 
desire the king were made a prelate; hear him 
debate of commonwealth affairs," etc. 

There had been little hope that Prince Hal 
would ever amount to much. The Globe 
audience — who had known all along that Hal 
was only having his fling and did not take low 
life too seriously — must have enjoyed this 
vindication of their good opinions of him. 
There is deep humor in the puzzlement of the 
reverend Archbishop that such perfect kingly 
deportment should manifest itself in him. 

Scene two keeps right on with this theme of 
grace in the king. We now see it not merely 



90 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Stated but in practical operation. And we 
perceive that the dignitaries of the church have 
good reason for their high opinions of him. He 
consults them in matters of importance. He 
recognizes them in their particular branch of 
government. He gives them work to do. 

Being about to go to war with France, he 
makes great question of his moral right in the 
point at issue; and it is for the clergy to decide 
this question regarding the Salic law. The 
Archbishop has been given this matter to 
"justly and religiously unfold," and now in 
Scene two he comes in with his report in 
hand. The verdict of the Archbishop is that 
the king has the law on his side. But Henry is 
not satisfied. "May I with right and conscience 
make this claim?" 

"For in the book of Numbers is it writ," 
answers the churchman, proceeding to show 
that rehgion will not be violated. The rest of 
his noblemen now lend him their voices in favor 
of the step. It is in this connection, with 
Westmoreland's speech, that we have the pe- 
culiar passage. Henry has put the whole stress 
on a question of moral right; hence it is easy to 
see why Shakespeare had the Earl begin, "They 
know your grace hath cause and means and 
might" — which is to say, he is justified before 
heaven as a king of grace. " They know" (Can- 
terbury and Ely) because they have looked into 
the law and consulted the Bible. 

No question had been made as to the physical 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 9I 

power to win the victory over France. It was 
the king's conscience that was being satisfied. 
But now Westmoreland, representing the tem- 
poral power, adds, "So hath your highness." 
The effect of this separate address of Henry by 
his temporal title is to set off the other title in 
its essential meaning and emphasize it. It is 
this particular view of the much-changed Prince 
Hal that Shakespeare is setting forth — he has 
become a king in all its branches. And in no 
way could it be so effectively emphasized. In 
short, these words are in keeping with the 
whole organism of the play, with regard to 
character, up to this point. 

Possibly a few stanzas of a poem by Stephen 
Hawes (1506) which I recently came across, 
would be of interest in this connection: 

To the high and mighty Prince, Henry the Seventh, by the 
grace of God king of England, and of France, Lord of Ireland, etc. 

Right mighty prince, and redoubted sovereign, 

Sailing forth well in the ship of grace 

Over the waves of life uncertain. 

Right toward heaven to have dwelling place; 

Grace doth you guide in every doubtful case; 

Your governance doth evermore eschew 

The sin of sloth, enemy to virtue. 

Grace stirreth well; the grace of God is great 

Which you have brought to your royal see, 

And in your right it hath you surely set 

Above us all to have the sovereignty; 

Whose worth, power and regal dignity 

All our rancor and our debate 'gan cease 

And hath us brought both wealth and rest and peace. 



92 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Your noble grace and excellent highness 
For to accept I beseech right humbly 
This little book, etc. 

This shows plainly enough what a king's 
** grace" meant to the mind of an Englishman 
four hundred years ago. Note **your noble 
grace and excellent highness," the then form 
of address. 



LAFEU 

Clown. Why, sir, if I cannot serve you I can serve as great 
a prince as you are. 

Lafeu. Who's that? A Frenchman? 

Clozvn. Faith, sir, 'a has an EngHsh name; but his fisnomy is 
more hotter in France than there. 

Lafeu. What prince is that? 

Clown. The black prince, sir; ahas, the prince of darkness; 
alias, the devil. 

Lafeu. Hold thee, there's my purse; I give thee not this to 
suggest thee from thy master thou talkest of; serve him still. 

Clown. I am a woodland fellow, sir, that always loved a great 
fire; and the master I speak of ever keeps a good fire. 

(All's Well, iv, 5, 41) 

Notes on this pass of wit seem to have gone 
astray because the commentators have missed 
the point of the clown's joke. The clown's 
whole allusion is to the fact that in French 
Lafeu {la feu) means the fire. From this he 
would infer that Lafeu, as shown by his family 
name, is a relative of the devil. It was simply 
because this idea occurred to him that Shake- 
speare wrote the passage at all. He started out 
with that allusion in mind, played around it 
for the fun of mystifying Lafeu, and then drove 
it home to the denser heads among the audience 
by tacit reference to a fire, twice repeated. 

Notes in all editions of Shakespeare have 
centered around the words "an English name,'* 
and "his fisnomy is more hotter," from which 



94 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

we have the conclusion that Shakespeare's allu- 
sion ''is obviously to the Black Prince.'^ That 
is to say, the son of the English king, Edward 
III, defeated the French at the battles of Crecy 
and Poictiers; and this is held to be the expla- 
nation of the clown's allusion in "an English 
name" which is "more hotter in France" than 
in England. 

This is not the primary allusion at all. The 
clown begins by saying that he can find service 
with "as great a prince" as the man he is talking 
to, and when Lafeu inquires who that prince 
may be, he replies that he has an English name, 
meaning simply that his name in English is the 
Devil; but in France he has a "hotter" fisnomy 
or name, which is, of course Lafeu, or fire. The 
reference is wholly to the name Lafeu and the 
fun consists in the clown's calling him a devil 
without his seeing the point. 

Hanmer, not being able to see how "hotter" 
could belong in this passage, emended it to 
honoured; and to this day there is a wavering 
inclination to this conjecture as can be seen by 
Gollancz's note: "Hanmers' proposal 'honour d* 
for 'hotter' seems to be a most plausible emen- 
dation." 

In the First Folio, the only source of this 
play, the text reads "an English Maine." It 
was Rowe who corrected it to name, thinking 
however that the allusion was to the "name" 
of the son of Edward III. Certain zealous ad- 
herents of the First Folio still contend that 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 95 

maine is correct, explaining that in English 
morality plays the devil was a "very hairy per- 
sonage"; therefore the reference to his "mane." 
What I have here pointed out ought to settle 
all doubt regarding these moot points in the 
text. 

If further proof is needed we have but to 
read farther along. When young Bertram 
comes home from the wars with his face all 
scarred up, Lafeu makes mention of it, where- 
upon the Clown makes rejoinder: — 

Lafeu. A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good livery of 
honour; so belike is that. 

Clown. But it is your carbonadoed face. 

Note the idea of fire still running in the 
clown's mind whenever he talks to Lafeu. 
"Carbonadoed" = Fr. carhonnade^ from the 
Latin carbo, a coal, meaning carbonadoed meat, 
which was slashed or scored preparatory to 
broiling. When the Clown addresses Lafeu 
he cannot get it out of his mind that his name 
means fire and that a man with such a hot name 
must be related to the devil. The intimation 
is that Bertram's face (who was none too moral 
a liver) was all ready for the devil's privy kitch- 
en — an idea that we have again in "Henry 
IV" regarding Bardolph. And so we can have 
no further mystery as to whether the proper 
word is "name" or how that name is "hotter'* 
in France than in England. 



BEYOND COMMISSION 

In the "Winter's Tale," Act I, Scene 2, there 
occurs a long passage which no one has been 
able to read. There are ten lines altogether, 
beginning with line 137- It is of signal interest 
in the fact that, despite all effort, it yields up 
no certain meaning either in part or as a whole; 
it is totally dark. 

Leontes, king of Sicily, is speaking to his little 
son Mamillius who stands beside him: 

Most dear'st! My collop! Can thy dam? — may't be? — 

Affection! thy intention stabs the centre; 

Thou dost make possible things not so held, 

Communicat'st with dreams; — how can this be? — 

With what's unreal thou co-active art, 

And fellow'st nothing. Then 't is very credent 

Thou may'st co-join with something; and thou dost, 

And that beyond commission, and I find it, 

And that to the infection of my brains 

And hardening of my brows. 

Furness in this case recommends to his readers 
the view of Collier who wrote: — "Not one of 
the commentators, ancient or modern, has con- 
curred with another. in the poet's meaning, and 
there can be little hesitation in coming to the 
conclusion that mishearing, misrecitation, and 
misprinting have contributed to the obscura- 
tion of what, possibly, was never very intelli- 
gible to common readers or auditors." 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 97 

Furness does not attempt to give a solution 
himself, nor does he see enough plausibility in 
the various conjectures upon the passage to 
make any choice between them. There has, 
in fact, been no complete solution offered — 
nothing which takes up every word and line 
and brings forth a central idea which fits the 
play. I therefore offer the following explana- 
tion, which, I think, proves itself. 

In these obscure hues, Leontes is preparing 
his mind for the resolve to kill his wife. He is 
clearing away a mental obstacle; and he does 
it by a course of reasoning. A mental obstacle 
must be overcome by mental means. 

As for killing Hermione, he has not the least 
compunction insofar as she is merely his wife. 
He suspects her of adultery with the king of 
Bohemia; and that is enough. But the little 
boy MamiUius is the idol of his soul, the apple 
of his eye — a perfect being in his estimation. 
Hermione is the boy's mother; she produced 
this perfect good; and whenever the enraged 
Leontes looks upon the boy he sees her in that 
light and his resolve to kill her is baffled. More- 
over this puts a new light on his deed. Insofar 
as she is his own wife, he is responsible to him- 
self. But in doing away with her he would be 
killing Mamillius' mother; and there he feels 
himself unable to give the command. It 
touches too closely upon the person of his boy. 
Indeed, for him to pronounce her utterly and 
wholly bad — as he must conclude before he 



98 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

can feel justified in ordering her death — offers 
a difficulty in itself; for how can he think the 
mother of such a boy utterly bad ? He cannot. 

Here then is a problem, a mental difficulty 
to be overcome if possible. Any reader who 
has the imagination to put himself in Leontes' 
place must see that this would be a very real 
and genuine mental difficulty — it would be 
inevitable. Any true reader of Shakespeare 
must know that he would not have Leontes 
plunge ahead and condemn his wife to death 
without giving any thought to its bearing upon 
a boy so idolized. To do so would not only be 
untrue to life, but it would be neglecting an 
opportunity for showing inner turmoil which 
makes true drama — a thing Shakespeare never 
did. Whatever Shakespeare did, he was never 
forgetful of the deeper activities of human 
nature which make a story vital. We have 
eithergot to conclude that hehad Leontes decide 
to kill Hermione deliberately, but without the 
least thought of his boy's relation to her, or else 
we have got to be prepared to find the subject 
taken up in these lines, for it certainly occurs 
nowhere else in the play. 

Leontes' mental dilemma was a hard one to 
deal with. How is he to overcome this inability 
utterly to condemn and kill this boy's mother.? 
Plainly, there is but one way. He must con- 
vince himself that, though he knows her to be 
his legitimate parent, she is not his parent in 
any deep essential way. What is needed is a 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 99 

point of view. This point of view is, after all, 
not far to be gone for nor farfetched when 
brought to view; for as a matter of fact it can 
be shown with perfectly good logic that Her- 
mione is not the boy's mother in any deep sense 
— he does not take after her in any way. He 
is another Leontes in every detail of feature 
and disposition. 

At great length (21 lines) and with the ut- 
most emphasis, Shakespeare has preceded this 
passage with a course of thought which is in- 
tended to lead up to and enforce upon us this 
necessary point of view. The dramatist is 
most ingenious in the little natural touches by 
which he brings forth the idea which he wishes 
to impress us with. Leontes sees a smudge on 
the little boy's nose and he at once busies him- 
self with cleaning off that nose which "is a copy 
out of mine." This is simply to force upon the 
mind of the audience that Mamillius is like his 
father in every physical detail. In all, they are, 
even in public repute, as Leontes says, "almost 
as like as eggs." This point of view at much 
length and particularity of thought, comes im- 
mediately before the passage in question. 

Now, immediately after the dark passage 
Shakespeare takes up the other half of their 
resemblance — their inner selves. Leontes, to 
test the boy, asks him a question which, in 
Elizabethan times, savored of insult: "Will you 
take eggs for money?" At once the little 
Mamillius replies, "No, my lord, I'll fight"; and 



lOO SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

as this is just what the father would do in 
any case where he considered himself im- 
posed upon, Leontes is delighted. Not only 
their outer features but their dispositions are 
the same — the boy takes after him and not 
his mother. 

Let us now ask ourselves a candid question. 
And if we are willing to believe that Shakespeare 
was a great organizer of material in view of the 
end to be accomplished — without which sur- 
passing ability he would not be a great drama- 
tist — we have got to answer accordingly. If 
we find a dark passage completely surrounded, 
and in the most methodic and philosophic 
way, with the one point of view, are we not to 
conclude that the dark passage has something 
to do with that same point of view? It comes 
between; it has been led up to and then finally 
and fundamentally concluded. The introduc- 
tory point of view is that Mamillius is not like 
his mother; and the conclusion is a still deeper 
view of this same fact — it is all one course of 
thought. 

In view of this systematic work, our conclu- 
sion must be that the passage does have a mean- 
ing and that it was carefully intended to be 
understood. This, being the case I may now 
state, in a preliminary way, what Leontes' 
course of reasoning is in these exclamatory lines. 
His point of view, which is quite simple and, in 
fact, quite logical, is as follows. 

As Mamillius is not like his mother in any 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE lOI 

way, being an exact reproduction of Leontes 
himself, their natures have nothing in common; 
and as she transmitted nothing to him^she is 
not his mother in any sense that needs to be 
seriously regarded. She is the mere matrix, 
the purely physical means by which another 
Leontes was produced. A mere animal func- 
tion, for as she gave him nothing of his soul or 
features, any other woman would have served 
as well. Therefore she is not his mother. She 
is a mere woman. 

There is something strange here, Leontes 
ponders — something exceeding strange; for 
how is a soul begotten? He begins to think 
deeply upon this mystery. Where there was 
but one inner nature like himself there are now 
two — another soul which is attuned in all its 
workings to his own! With what mysterious 
source did he communicate to woo forth from 
nature that mind and spirit which is a counter- 
part of his own ? Certainly it was no communi- 
cation with her that did it; for as she has 
nothing of that nature she could not shape it 
forth; she could not contribute anything, for 
the boy is pure Leontes. She could not con- 
ceive that nature; only his own mind could 
conceive it. With what mysterious source, 
therefore, he asks himself, did he communicate; 
and how was it done? His answer is that the 
boy, that essential spirit, came simply from the 
secret, central source in nature itself. It was 
his yearning, his longing, his own passionate 



I02 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

soul-power which reached out and called forth 
a being, a soul, from the very centre of life it- 
self; and that soul, being the result of his own 
yearning and conception, was the reproduction 
of himself. This is procreation in truth; him- 
self and nature. In very truth — and the very 
image and deportment of the boy bear witness 
to the fact — he is the sole parent of the boy. 
The woman was a mere medium that he came 
through — what he calls, in his revery, the 
"sluice." Once he saw things in this light 
Hermione ceased instantly to be the boy's 
mother in any way that mattered. At that 
moment the difficulty in his mind was over- 
come; he saw his way clear to accuse and kill 
her. 

This a strange interpretation of these lines, 
is it not? It sounds rather strained and in- 
genious, possibly.^ Look then at Leontes' own 
state of mind in regard to the whole matter, 
**Can thy dam? — may't be? — how can this 
be? — ". He is in a mood of wonder over the 
whole mystery; therefore our interpretation 
of the lines, if they were merely commonplace 
in their point of view, could hardly be true to 
the text itself, its very mood and circumstance. 
Thoughts which exqite wonder in the speaker 
must be a little unusual in the interpretation. 
He thought deeply in his mental dilemma; 
and suddenly this whole point of view struck 
him as a revelation. It took him by surprise; 
he followed the idea eagerly; and this is the 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE IO3 

reason that the Unes are so quick and fragmen- 
tary. 

Leontes uses the word "intentionr" In 
Shakespeare's time intention meant aim; it 
was so used in archery to designate the cen- 
tering of the mind upon the target. The mys- 
terious source of hfe, he calls "the centre." 
This is a figure of speech which does not relate 
to archery alone. In the Ptolemaic view of 
astronomy, which was held in Shakespeare's 
day, the whole universe was supposed to re- 
volve around the centre of the earth. Some 
mysterious power in that central point of the 
earth held the spheres in their appointed places; 
it was the very soul of the universe. Leontes 
therefore uses it, figuratively, to express the 
central source or essential power of nature. 
Shakespeare has used this figure in other places, 
as in the Sonnets where he calls the human soul 
"the centre of my sinful earth." It stands for 
spirit or the mysterious source as opposed to the 
mere material; and Leontes' point of view is the 
same. 

We are now in a position to take up the pas- 
sage verbatim and put our interpretation to the 
strict test. Does it fit every word and sentence 
in the passage? That must decide the matter. 
Before we start, let me ask the reader to observe 
that the passage does not advance from one 
reason to another, by logical steps. It is not 
a gradually reasoned-out thing. It is a contin- 
ual repetition of the same thing in different words 



104 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

and from different points of view. It is just 
the one sudden idea that Leontes has and he 
repeats it over and over; therefore I must deal 
repeatedly with the one idea in taking up the 
several lines. The fact that the passage is of 
this peculiar nature, must, I think, make our 
knowledge absolute; for I hope no one will 
give me credit, in point of ingenuity, of being 
so skilful a word-twister that I can take up 
any long set of lines and make them all mean 
the same thing. If they all fit the idea it must 
be because Shakespeare made them to express 
that idea. 

Sweet villain! 
Mostdear'st! mycollop! Can thy dam? — may'tbe? — 

Here the whole query suddenly strikes Le- 
ontes' mind. "Can thy dam.^ — " is his unfin- 
ished question to himself; it is broken off by 
the depth of his revery. His whole question 
would be: Can it be possible that your mother 
(thy dam) has had any real part in the produc- 
tion of a boy who is totally different from her- 
self? How could she, by any powers of her 
own, conceive and produce my nature? 

We might note here that a "collop" was a 
small piece of meat cut off another. In the 
present connection it is equivalent to calling 
the boy "a chip of the old block." Note also 
that Leontes has already conceived her as per- 
forming a mere animal function in motherhood : 
he uses the animal term for mother — "dam." 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE IO5 

Here follows his answer to this query five times 
repeated. 

Affection! thy intention stabs the centre. -^' 

The emphasis should come strongly on "thy" 
and "intention," meaning that the boy's nature 
was begotten by the intense desire and passion- 
ate aim of his own nature; it was this intense 
desire of his, and nothing else, that reached out 
and communicated with the very centre and 
source of life and brought a Mamillius forth. 
It was the soul-power of his own "intention," 
not anything of the mere physical woman's 
nature that did it. 

Thou dost make possible things not so held. 

We must remember that Affection is the sub- 
ject of all these sentences; it is the thing he is 
addressing, abstractly, throughout. What is 
generally held to be impossible is to make 
something out of nothing. As Mamillius did 
not receive his substance from his father, in a 
material sense, nor his spirit and essential na- 
ture from his mother, his soul and character 
came into being through nothing but Leontes' 
peculiar powers of affection reaching out to 
that mysterious centre of nature, a source with- 
out substance, and bringing a Mamillius forth. 
Therefore this strange power can make some- 
thing out of nothing: it "dost make possible 
things not so held." It is this strange paradox 
which enchains Leontes' imagination — espe- 



I06 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

cially as it is an evident fact when viewed in this 
way. 

With what's unreal thou co-active art. 

This is simply saying the same thing. He is 
ampHfying it in other ways of expression. The 
"co-active" makes Shakespeare's allusion to 
the act of procreation most definite and unmis- 
takable. "With what's unreal," means source 
without substance, nothing — the same as 
before. 

And fellow'st nothing. 

It is driven home to our understanding once 
again. "Fellow'st" is a choice of word which 
still has a view to procreation. It was an act 
between himself and this invisible source; the 
woman was a mere physical interposition. 

He has now stated the idea to himself (and 
to us) in a variety of ways. He has been trying 
to achieve expression of this peculiar thing. 

Then 't is very credent 
Thou may'st co-join with something. 

He now comes to a triumphant deduction. 
One thing has been in his mind which would 
seem to be an obstacle to his conclusion that 
Hermione had nothing essential to do with the 
production of the boy. It is the fact that she 
did co-join. But this, in view of what he has 
already reasoned, makes no difference, the con- 
clusion being as follows. If the begetting of 
the boy's nature was accomplished by his power 
of "affection" acting upon an immaterial 
source, the mere centre or principle of nature, 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I07 

then it was a thing entirely apart from the phys- 
ical or material. Therefore 'tis very credent 
that he might co-join with something, and yet 
this material or physical something would have 
nothing to do with the essential creation, be- 
cause thatisnotinthe realm of the mere physical 
or material. In other words, he might co-join 
with Hermione in her material and physical 
functions, but as the boy is not of mere physical 
origin, she would have no essential part in his 
creation as a human soul. "'Tis very credent" 
he says. In fact it is perfectly logical from the 
facts of the case and the premises set down. 
Thus Hermione is totally eliminated from any 
relationship to the boy except in a mere material 
sense. The word "something" here is used in 
the sense of a material body or thing, as op- 
posed to nothing out of which a human soul or 
nature is made. 

Then 't is very credent 
Thou may'st co-join with something; and thou dost 
And that beyond commission. 

"Beyond commission" means beyond the 
commission of a mere physical act. He co-joins 
with something material, but the essential act 
of creation is in a realm far beyond the com- 
mission of the act itself. From which it will 
be seen that he is saying the same thing again. 

And that beyond commission. And I find it — 

The emphasis should be on "I." It was he, 
not Hermione, that by the power of affection, 
the intense soul-passion and desire, reached out 



I08 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

and found another nature like himself in that 
realm beyond "something" or the mere mate- 
rial, beyond "commission" or the mere commit- 
ting of a material act. The whole idea is here 
emphasized again. It was he that found that 
soul, not Hermione. 

And / find it, 
And that to the infection of my brains 
And hardening of my brows. 

This, the end of the passage, is an allusion 
to a current term for cuckold ry which we need 
not go into as it is not a part of the course of 
reasoning. It is his mere conclusion in which 
he now turns with embittered thought to Her- 
mione's supposed infidelity. 

We have now examined this long passage 
internally, and with regard to its immediate 
context, and in relation to the plot as a whole. 
As Leontes would not naturally kill Hermione 
without some thought of the boy's interests, 
her relations to him, we see that some such 
course of thought is an essential part of the plot. 
This play, which almost ends as a tragedy and 
virtually is one, has for its most tragic inter- 
est the condemning of Hermione to death. 
Leontes, mad with suspicion and burning for 
revenge, finds this -obstacle to his action — 
the idea of her motherhood to the boy. In 
this sudden mental crisis, a storm of inner 
action which leaves only the broken fragments 
of sentences in its wake, the obstacle disap- 
pears. From this point the fate of Hermione is 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE IO9 

sealed and the whole course of tragic experi- 
ence is started. This passage is therefore the 
very pivot on which the plot of the play revolves. 

Staunton, having caught correctly at the 
meaning of such words as "co-join," seems to 
be the only critic to have suspected that the 
passage has physiological allusion. He ex- 
plains: "Leontes asks, 'Can it be possible a 
mother's vehement imagination should pene- 
trate even to the womb, and there imprint 
upon the embryo what stamp she choose? 
Such apprehensive fantasy, then, he goes on 
to say, 'we may believe will readily co-join 
with something tangible, and it does; etc.'" 
Staunton's idea of its significance seems to be 
that, as Hermione was a woman of strong imag- 
ination, which is brought out by the fact that 
Mamillius bears so close a resemblance to his 
father, she might easily be beguiled into an 
attachment for Polixenes. While this is an 
oceanwidth from the idea, it shows at least 
that he had an inkling of the meaning of certain 
words. 

Furness gives this conjecture short shrift, 
saying, rather disdainfully, "Are we to believe 
that the betossed soul of Leontes is here inter- 
ested in a recondite physiological speculation?" 

To a man who did not catch the passage as a 
whole, nor understand its bearing upon the 
play in general, this physiological interpreta- 
tion of certain words must certainly have seemed 
ridiculous. 



THE CLEAREST GODS 

Edgar. . . . therefore, thou happy father, 
Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours 
Of men's impossibiHties, have preserved thee. 

(King Lear, iv, 6, 72) 

The meaning of "clearest" in this connec- 
tion is a point which remains unconquered. 
Furness submits a hst of the most notable con- 
jectures since the time of Theobald and Samuel 
Johnson but does not venture to suggest that 
any of them may be right. 

When Shakespeare is so extremely logical 
that he begins a statement with therefore, we 
may be warranted in saying that a little logical 
thought was expected to make the case plain. 

The ''clearest" gods are, and always have 
been, those that perform miracles. As man's 
conception of deity is liable to be vague, ab- 
stract and uncertain, the god that deals defi- 
nitely with us by performing a miracle makes 
himself clearest to the mind. A miracle is in 
the nature of proof. 

The trouble here is that critics do not grasp 
the one great thing which Shakespeare has 
done with Gloucester in the course of the play. 

Gloucester, by being made to suffer to the 
limit of human endurance, and for no just 
reason that he can see, loses his faith in an over- 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE III 

ruling providence. There is no divine care- 
taking; no higher power whose deeper wisdom 
we may depend upon. Nay worse: — 

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, 
They kill us for their sport. 

This was Gloucester's view; and the best 
thing to do in such a world was to take your 
life in your own hands and die. 

This is in Act 3. In Act 4 a great change 
has come over him; we hear him say: 

You ever gentle gods, take my breath from me; 
Let not my worser spirit tempt me again 
To die before you please. 

And a little later we see this same man 
standing under a tree, blind and helpless, with 
worse fortunes still piling in around him. But 
nothing can move him to impatience now; he 
is as passive as the tree itself. 

What was it that made such a change in him.? 
It was what he saw in a moment when this 
remark about "the clearest gods" was made to 
him. Right at that instant the great trans- 
formation in his soul was wrought, and by those 
few words. If we do not understand the 
cliff scene as leading up to the climax in these 
words we have missed a whole section of the 
play. 

Edgar led his blind father to a place on the 
flat plain and made him believe he was stand- 
ing on the very edge of Dover cliff. Then he 
pretended to go away, knowing that the aged 
and life-weary man would take the leap from 



112 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

what he supposed to be an awful height. Edgar 
did this because the deep eye of love showed 
him what had happened to his father more 
serious than even the loss of his eyes. Glouces- 
ter had lost his faith. And the only way this 
could be at once restored was by a miracle. 
Accordingly, when Gloucester took the leap and 
fell flatlong, Edgar ran to him and in altered 
voice made him believe that he had really 
fallen from that dizzy height but had been 
made to come off without injury. The watch- 
ful gods had done it; they had interposed to 
save him by a miracle. From that moment 
to the end of the tragedy no suffering is too 
great for Gloucester patiently to endure. He 
had lost his bodily vision, but the eyesight of 
his soul had been restored. He believed; and 
the deep inner havoc was mended. There is 
not in all literature — there could not be — a 
scene so beautiful as this cliff episode when we 
understand it. The son, with deep insight of 
the state of affairs, contrives to heal his father's 
maimed soul. He has given him back his 
faith. 

Nothing but a miracle could save a man who 
jumped off the edge of Dover cliff; and none 
but the gods can perform a miracle: — 

therefore, thou happy father 
Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours 
Of men's impossibihties, have preserved thee. 

The watchful gods, in whom Gloucester had 
ceased to believe, are thus made clear to him. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE II3 

And Edgar calls him "happy" because he feels 
that though worldly losses may not be righted, 
the man has been given something worth having. 

The *' clearest gods" are simply those gods 
"who make them honours of men's impossi- 
bilities," or in other words those who perform 
miracles for human edification. Shakespeare 
has defined the word himself; the two phrases 
are synonymous. This pronouncement is the 
climax of the whole episode; and, as I have 
repeatedly shown, Shakespeare is careful to 
define by reiteration the meanings that are of 
great import. In fact, a large proportion of 
these so-called cruxes, where typographical 
error is suspected, are simply climactic passages; 
and because they are the high points of an 
inner tragedy — of happenings to the mind and 
soul themselves — they involve a point of view. 
It is because they involve a point of view that 
Shakespeare expresses them, not in common- 
place and worn phrases, but in words funda- 
mentally selected to force the point of view upon 
us. A miracle, fundamentally, is to make god 
clear to those who do not believe. If we miss 
what is being said here we miss a whole impor- 
tant section of the play. 

It will now be worth a few moments' time to 
observe a certain point of art in the handhng 
of this whole episode. From the time Edgar 
takes his father's arm, at the end of Scene i, 
Act iv, and starts out for the clifF, we are not 
given the least hint of what his intentions are. 



114 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

We see them arrive at a place on the plain; we 
watch with interest and possibly a smile as 
Edgar describes the locality in imaginary de- 
tails; and finally we see him place the blind 
Gloucester on the supposed verge and formally 
leave him, calling back to prove that he has 
gone. All this time there is hot the least 
mention of a miracle. Only at the last moment, 
when Gloucester is about to pray, and this 
trifling with his belief might excite the resent- 
ment of the audience, does Edgar give any 
hint that he has an object in all this. And 
then he merely says, in an aside to the audience: 
**Why I do trifle thus with his despair, is done 
to cure it" — but with no indication of what 
the nature of that cure is going to be. This 
is all held in the realm of curiosity and suspense 
so that the revelation may fall with the greater 
weight when it suddenly comes out. Neither 
the word miracle, nor the idea of it, is given us. 
The whole explanation of the scene and its 
deeper motives are made to rest on those two 
lines. It is important therefore that we should 
understand them. 

I here append a few of the principal con- 
jectures. Note how the critics try to arrive at 
meanings by mere verbal means. 

Theobald: That is, open and righteous in 
their dealing. So in Timon, iv, iii, 27, "Ye 
clear heavens." 

Johnson: The purest; the most free from 
evil. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE II 5 

Capell: It may have the sense of clear- 
sighted, given with some reference to the im- 
position on Gloucester, his weak belief of 
his bastard. 

White: The sense of the context, and the 
great similarity in manuscript between cl and 
d, make it more than possible that the correct 
reading here is dearest. Yet by such a change 
we should lose the fine opposition of "clearest" 
and "impossibilities." 

Schmidt says that bright, pure, glorious are 
all contained in the word "clear." 

Furness does not offer a solution. 



THE FAIRIES' RINGLETS 

Titania. These are the forgeries of jealousy; 
And never since the middle summer's spring 
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, 
By paved fountain or by rushy brook, 
Or in the beached margent of the sea, 
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind. 
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport. 

(Midsummer Night, ii, i, 86) 

W. A. Wright, In annotating this passage in 
the Cambridge edition, explained these "ring- 
lets" as being the same as Titania's "orbs upon 
the green" which are mentioned a few lines 
before; that is, the little circles of grass known 
as fairy rings. 

Furness, in getting out the Variorum, found 
a considerable difficulty with Wright's note. 
Ringlets of grass do not grow upon the beached 
margent of the sea. As the only way out of 
the difficulty he decided that the fairies danced 
upon the sandy beach for the sake of letting 
the wind blow through their hair. 

It is easy enough to pronounce this view 
ridiculous — which it certainly must be to 
anyone with a literary sense of humor — but it 
must be remembered that the objection is 
perfectly valid. Shakespeare was so pains- 
taking in every line and had such vivid con- 
ceptions of everything he wrote that it is 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE II7 

impossible to conceive him as speaking of rings 
of grass on the blank "margent" of the sea. 
As Fumess says, "The fairy rings 'whereof the 
ewe not bites' are found where the grass grows 
green in pastures, but not by the paved foun- 
tain nor by rushy brook, and never in the 
beached margent of the sea, on those yellow 
sands where of all places, from Shakespeare's 
day to this, fairies foot it featly and toss their 
gossamer ringlets to the whistling and the 
music of the wind." 

How are we to straighten out this profound 
question ? 

We have got to start by remarking that 
Wright and Furness are both wrong: these 
"ringlets" are neither circles of grass nor 
ringlets of hair. 

The orbs or circles of grass in the meadow 
are the result of the fairies' having danced there. 
They are not pre-existent circles of grass which 
the fairies dance round. Shakespeare evidently 
had a perfect understanding of this : — 

you demi-puppets that 
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make 
Whereof the ewe not bites. — Tempest, v, i, 37. 

Fairies dance in circles; they have an all- 
hands-round way of disporting themselves in 
their moonlight revels; and in their footsteps 
spring up these circles of grass in the pasture. 
Now, inasmuch as fairies can dance wherever 
they please, whether in the pasture or by the 
rushy brook or in the beached margent of the 



Il8 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

sea, it is evident they are going to do so; and 
if the soil does not happen to be fertile enough 
to bring up grass in their footsteps, what care 
they? The point is that these "ringlets" are 
simply the circles in which they danced. We 
are here supposed to get a live picture of the 
little people themselves. If a large circle is 
a ring a little circle is a ringlet; and the diminu- 
tive gives an impression of the smallness of 
the fairies. 



STILL-PEERING AIR 

O you leaden messengers, 
That ride upon the violent speed of fire. 
Fly with false aim; move the still-peering air 
That sings with piercing. 

(All's Well, iii, 2, 113) 

" Still-peering, adj. a doubtful word." (Globe glossary) 

" Still-peering, that seems to be motionless? A doubtful word." 

(Neilson, 1906) 

"Still-peering air; so Folio i; Folio 2, 'still-piercing'; prob- 
ably an error for still-piecing; i.e. still-closing." 

(GoUancz) 

Conjecture on this famous difficulty began 
with Warburton and his contemporaries, but 
as none of the many suggestions have proved 
self-evident or plausible it is now considered a 
hopeless crux. During the past century Steev- 
ens' "still-piecing" has been most favored 
while still remaining a mere conjecture. That 
"still" means always or ever, according to 
Shakespeare's usage, is generally recognized; 
the perplexity is in regard to peering. 

"Peering" as here used is a verb form of 
the noun peer, meaning an equal. In war 
(the present connection) a man's peer would 
be one whom he could not overcome. "Still- 
peering air" means that the air, despite the 



I20 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

leaden missiles that pierce it, is ever uncon- 
quered, always unvanquished — invulnerable. 

If we have any familiarity with Shake- 
speare we must soon learn that he had certain 
poetic conceptions which his mind kept in 
stock, as it were, and which he made repeated 
use of. Ariel says to the shipwrecked noble- 
men: 

Wound the loud winds or with bemocked-at stabs 
Kill the still-closing waters. 

In "Hamlet," Marcellus says: 

For it is, as the air, invulnerable, 

And our vain blows malicious mockery. 

Again, in the same play: 

his poisoned shot may miss our name 
And hit the woundless air. 

In "Macbeth" we have: 

As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air 

With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed. 

In the "Tempest" this invulnerability of the 
air is given a humorous turn: 

So full of valor that they smote the air. 

The above is sufficient to show us that the 
idea which my interpretation would observe is 
one — in fact it is the one — which would be 
natural to Shakespeare's mind. But now re- 
mains the whole question: Is this what he 
means here? Would Shakespeare take the 
noun peer, look at it from the standpoint of 
war as being one who could not be vanquished, 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 121 

and then use it in the verb form? To this we 
must reply that it is utterly Shakespearean. 

In the beginning of *'The Merchant of Ven- 
ice" we have a description of Antonio's mer- 
chant fleets, which 

Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood 

Do overpeer the petty traffickers, 

That curtsey to them, do them reverence. 

Note the connection in order to get the exact 
sense of "overpeer." Signiors and rich burgh- 
ers, which the ships are like, are superior 
citizens, they are like peers of the realm, in 
which sense they overpeer the inferior citizens 
who curtsey to them. 

In "Cymbeline" the two princes are de- 
scribed. We learn that even though their 
position and birth were entirely laid aside, the 
greatest men 

Could not outpeer these twain. 

In both these cases we have the noun peer 
used in verb form. And so, if a man who peers 
another equals him, and one who out-peers or 
overpeers another more than equals him, we 
may say that they are peering or outpeering 
or overpeering in the sense of exercising equality 
or superiority. And so "still-peering" air 
regards the atmosphere as always and ever the 
equal of these leaden missiles of war — incon- 
querable, invulnerable. 

We see therefore that the line expresses an 
idea that fits the general connection and from 



122 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

a point of view which was native to Shake- 
speare's mind; and it does it in words which 
are according to his usage in other places. 
With this explanation the passage should be as 
open to sense as any the commonest and 
plainest English that Shakespeare ever wrote. 



THE NATURE OF CAPITAL 

Captain. Truly to speak, and with no addition, 
We go to gain a little patch of ground 
That hath in it no profit but the name. 
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it. 

(Hamlet, iv, 4, 20) 

The usual explanation of this line is that 
the second "five" is a mere repetition for the 
sake of emphasis. Editors generally, past and 
present, punctuate according to this inter- 
pretation.] 

But this is not the meaning. Shakespeare 
is here striking deeper into the nature of things. 
It is the very nature of money to have other 
money owing to it; first, the original amount 
invested, and then something over. When 
you take five ducats and put it into some enter- 
prise, your capital has the same amount owing 
to it plus a profit. Your five ducats stand in 
your accounts as a sum of money to which an 
equal amount is owing on its own behalf to- 
gether with something over for yourself. There- 
fore to make an investment with no result but 
to pay five ducats five would be the reductio 
ahsurdum of investment; it would be simply to 
take pains without profit. This then is what the 
line means and the way it should be printed — 
to pay five ducats five. 



124 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

The Captain is not only saying this but he 
is rating the land still lower; he would not 
even expect to come out of the transaction by 
paying his five ducats their five; in other 
words the land would be farmed at a loss. It 
might very well have been said in just those 
words; but Shakespeare, as usual, not merely 
says it but does it in such a way as to strike 
into the very nature and philosophy of the 
thing. 

The generally accepted interpretation not 
only misses this but has the Captain say the 
wrong thing and do it very awkwardly. He 
is supposed to be saying that he would not 
undertake to farm it to make a total profit of 
five ducats; and to be repeating the five simply 
to impress that amount on Hamlet's mind. 
Hence the present way of punctuating. But 
this is to miss the whole sense and spirit of the 
line. 

The line should be printed without the 
commas before and after five; it is a straight- 
away English sentence which drives directly 
at its meaning. Shakespeare does not indulge 
in such weak emphasis nor halt and boggle 
a line over a point so futile and insignificant. 



THE CHESS PLAYERS 

The entrance of the cell opens, and discovers Ferdinand 
and Miranda playing at chess. 
Mira. Sweet lord, you play me false. 
Ferd. No, my dear'st love. 

I would not for the world. 

Mira. Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, 
And I would call it fair play. 

(The Tempest V, i, 170) 

Close thought upon the possible significance 
of Miranda's remark has only led critics and 
editors deeper into the darkness of an unsolv- 
able passage. The words usually selected for 
textual notes are, "you should wrangle." 
Speculation is divided as to whether she is 
saying that he ought to wrangle and she would 
call it fair play, or whether she means that if 
he did wrangle she would call it fair play; 
and there is indecision as to what she means, 
exactly, by wrangle. Hudson says, "The 
sense evidently wanted here is, 'you might 
play me false'; but how to get this out of 
wrangle^ is not very apparent." He then takes 
up a theory that as wrangle is derived from 
wrong, and the north of England has the ex- 
pression wrangously for wrongfully, the word 
wrangle in this passage is "an explanatory 
parallelism of Miranda's 'play me false' and 
means wrong me, — cheat me at the game." 



126 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Johnson, as cited by Furness, says: "I take 
the sense to be only this; Ferdinand would 
not, he says, play her false for the world; yes, 
answers she, I would allow you to do it for 
something less than the world, for twenty 
kingdoms, and I wish you well enough to 
allow you, after a little wrangle, that your 
play was fair." Furness pointed out the in- 
consistency of this: — "It is not at once mani- 
fest whether 'score' here is account, game or 
the number twenty, but in either case, I think, 
we should expect that Miranda, in order to 
show her boundless faith and love, would ex- 
aggerate Ferdinand's vaunt and not diminish 
it as she does, according to Mr. Smith and 
Dr. Johnson." 

While this shows the unsatisfactoriness of 
taking the passage in such a sense, Mr. Furness 
did not offer a solution. 

As a matter of fact, the trouble here is not 
one of this word or that, for they are all per- 
fectly familiar, nor of a particular phrase nor 
yet any doubtful grammatical construction. 
What is wanted is an insight of the spirit in 
which the lovers are speaking throughout. 
If we ask what Miranda means in this remark, 
why do we not go further and inquire what 
she means by saying "Sweet lord, you play 
me false." Was Ferdinand cheating? If so, 
what sort of ideal lover is he, and how has his 
character changed so utterly of a sudden? If 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 127 

he was not playing her false, what does she 
mean by saying he is? Is she just doing this 
for the pleasure of hearing him deny it and 
declare his devotion? If she was so politic a 
coquette here she is certainly not the utterly 
sincere and frank Miranda we have learned to 
take pleasure in. 

The question should be: What does this 
whole scene mean? Why did Shakespeare 
write it at all? What was his object? The 
solution consists in pointing out the whole 
dramatic scheme of the author when he in- 
vented the scene. 

When Shakespeare sat down to write this 
he had come to the fifth act of "The Tempest"; 
and almost the end of the act. The characters 
have all gone through their strange experience; 
deep lessons have been taught, past wrongs 
retributed and the fond lover tried; the magic 
wand has been discarded and Ariel is all done 
except for a slight remaining service. It is 
really the end of the play with only a formal 
conclusion to be observed. 

At this point, Shakespeare wished to give 
us a final glimpse of the happy lovers; and he 
wanted to do it in some short climactic way 
which would give us the deepest and most 
delighted insight of perfect unselfish love. 
How would he contrive to do it? With only 
blank paper before him, and in his usual mood 
of close scrutiny into human nature, he sat 
and thought it over. When he was through 



128 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

he had done it in five Hnes; and here is what 
the audience saw: 

The entrance to the cave or cell being un- 
covered, Miranda and Ferdinand were seen 
within at a game of chess. Pawns, knights, 
castles, bishops in their respective colors were 
prominent on the board; and (what an au- 
dience would take account of at once) they were 
mostly in Miranda's possession. Miranda was 
v/inning. And now we hear her say : 

Sweet lord, you play me false. 

In other words, Ferdinand was deliberately 
giving the game away to her. 
He answers: 

No, my dearest love, 

I would not for the world. 

As a matter of fact he was not playing her 
false. So utter is his unselfishness toward her, 
so far removed from his mind is any thought 
but that of giving where she is concerned, that 
he has actually been helping her to win and 
taking pleasure every time a move was in her 
favor. 

But a game is of such a nature that it will 
not go on under such conditions — it will not 
be a game. A game is in the nature of a 
contest, and there must at least be a mimic 
desire to gain the victory and leave the other 
person the loser. Miranda, knowing by the 
promptings of her own soul what the diflficulty 
is, sees that he must, in order to be desirous 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 1 29 

of winning, stir his mind with a Hvely imagina- 
tion of tremendous stakes. And so she stirs 
him up: 

Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, — 

And then she adds (tell-tale words that 
show us she is just as pleased to lose to him as 
he is to her) — 

And I would call it fair play. 

By wrangle, she means contest by every 
means in his power, and whatever means he 
took to win she would call it fair. In short, 
these two cannot really play a game; their 
thoughts are all of love, and it consists only 
of unselfishness and joy in the other's success. 
They have only been playing because each 
thought it would give pleasure to the other. 

In no way I can think of would it be possible 
to put such unique and telling emphasis, in 
short, upon the thing Shakespeare wished to 
show. The fundamental psychology of a game 
is love of a contest, victory and gain. To this 
engaged couple, in the first new joy of self- 
abnegating love, all this is just the opposite; 
and it is no wonder that the game was all 
going contrary to what it ought and that 
Miranda had to suggest tremendously big 
measures to make it be a real game. Its 
dramatic merit consists in the fact that it 
would deliver its message instantly and thor- 
oughly in an unique and interesting way. 



130 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

It would amuse the audience. And the loca- 
tion of all the paraphernalia of victory, in con- 
nection with her opening remark, would make 
any profound interpretation unnecessary to 
the Elizabethan audience. 



CLEOPATRA'S ANSWER 

Cleo. Be it known, that we, the greatest, are misthought 
For things that others do; and, when we fall, 
We answer others' merits in our name, 
Are therefore to be pitied. 

(Antony and Cleopatra v, 2, 176) 

These words, in the last scene of the last act 
of the play, are Cleopatra's final declaration to 
Caesar. After this we see her but for a short 
space with the clown and her ladies; and then 
her death. 

As will be seen, the passage does not make 
complete sense. As we gather its meaning, 
the sentence refuses to carry itself farther 
than the word name, after which there is a 
detached remainder of words which we scarcely 
know what to do with. The only way to get 
around the difficulty is to assume that We is 
to be understood before the last line. This is 
the basis upon which it is accepted in the most 
scholarly modern editions. The above punc- 
tuation is that of the Globe. 

Accepting it upon this basis, we see that the 
last line is a sentence by itself; a full stop is 
to be understood after name. Neilson (1906), 
in order to make the punctuation fit the 
approved interpretation of the sense, approxi- 
mates the period by using a semi-colon; usually 



132 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

the difficulty is slubbered over with a comma 
in order to rest upon the authority of the First 
Folio. 

Turning now our attention to the sense, we 
see in Cleopatra's first statement that persons 
in high positions are blamed for misdeeds and 
errors committed by those under them. This 
is plain; but upon reading farther what does 
the word merits mean here? Does it mean 
those same misdeeds and errors? — or to stick 
more strictly to the text, do "merits" in the 
underlings mean these things which make a 
queen misthought? Commentators, including 
Furness, accept it in that sense. In no other 
way can they carry a connected meaning as 
far as the understood "We." 

Another source of dissatisfaction, to me, is 
that if this is the meaning of the passage as a 
whole, then the words "others' merits in our 
name" are superfluous. As much would have 
been said without them; and as we know, 
Shakespeare usually makes progress in every 
word with a giant's stride. Was he so redun- 
dant here? I also find that he never uses merits 
in that derogatory sense in the whole course of 
his work. 

The whole trouble here is an incomplete per- 
ception of what Cleopatra is saying. We 
should put a period after answer; then the 
passage will fit her meaning — aside from the 
great improvement in the dramatic poetry 
from the standpoint of vocal rendition. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I33 

Just previous to this passage, an incident has 
occurred by which the captive Queen, now re- 
duced to the rank of mere woman, has been 
greatly humihated. She has just handed over 
to C^sar the^Hst^of her jewels and other wealth, 
declaring, at the same time, that she has re- 
served nothing of any considerable value. And, 
to impress upon him the truth of her statement, 
she refers him to her treasurer, Seleucas. 

But Seleucas! This man, who owes her 
loyalty and gratitude, lets it be known in a few 
words that what she has said is not true at all. 
She has reserved fully half her wealth — plate 
and jewels. Cleopatra has told a fib. To make 
it worse she has been caught in it by the very 
means she had taken to make it valid — hence 
the blush. But does 'she weakly succumb to 
this mischance or acknowledge herself caught. f* 
Not at all. Having vented the anger of a 
wronged queen upon her unworthy subject, 
and told Caesar with charming assumption of 
her high station that these valuable things were 
but "lady trifles," she makes that final declara- 
tion which begins so strikingly : 

Be it known, that we, the greatest, are misthought 
For things that others do; and when we fall 
We answer. 

This general statement resounds like a royal 
proclamation: Be it known. The great are 
misjudged all their lives. Having made this 
statement she proceeds with the logical corol- 
lary. Seleucas had betrayed his fallen queen 



134 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

because he hoped to recommend himself to 
Caesar. He saw himself out of office, and, look- 
ing for new preferment, he thought that this 
truth-telling would seem a merit in Caesar's 
eyes. 

Others' merits in our name 
Are therefore to be pitied. 

It is well argued. If we great ones have to 
answer for all the misdeeds of others, it is a 
shame and a pity that, when we have fallen, 
they should assume merits at our expense. 
That is to say, at the expense of her good name; 
hence "in our name." 

Furness understands Cleopatra's conclusion 
to mean that "from the eminence of our posi- 
tion, therefore, we are to be pitied." But 
Cleopatra is talking about something more than 
simply that. The present condition of these 
lines is due to a failure to see that she has any 
reference to Seleucas. She is deahng with the 
case in hand. 



LORD BARDOLPH'S REPLY 

L. Bardolph. Yes, if this present quality of war 
Needed the instant action. A cause on foot 
Lives so in hope as in an early spring 
We see the appearing buds, which to prove fruit 
Hope gives not so much warrant as despair 
That frosts will bite them. 

{Neilson's ed. 1906) 
L. Bard. Yes, if this present quality of war, 
Indeed the instant action: a cause on foot 
Lives so in hope {etc.). 

{Globe ed. and Cambridge) 
L. Bard. Yes, in this present quality of war; 
Indeed the instant action — a cause on foot — 
Lives so in hope {etc.). 

{Malone, White, Gollancz, etc.) 
L. Bard. Yes, if this present quality of warre, 
Indeed the instant action: a cause on foot, 
Liues so in hope {etc.). 

{First Folio, 1623) 

Let the reader note first where the full stop 
(period or colon) comes, Neilson and the 
Globe have it after action; a large number of 
other editors have it after war; the First Folio 
has it after action. Note next the changes 
that have been made in wording and compare 
them with the First FoHo. Where the Folio 
has indeed Neilson has needed. Again, where 
the original text has ?/, Malone, White and 
others have in. Here we have a view of the 
struggles with this passage from the early edi- 



136 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

tors up to the present day; and the compara- 
tively recent Globe edition, which was thought 
to be the final word in Shakespearean scholar- 
ship, is so unsatisfactory that the latest scholarly 
edition (1906) cannot accept it as making 
satisfactory sense. And yet, this present-day 
reading is only had by substituting needed, a 
word for which there is no authority except 
editorial conjecture; all of which must leave 
us in an unsatisfactory state of mind as to what 
we are to understand here. 

I hope the reader has begun to gather that 
in solving these "cruxes" I am not depending 
upon verbal quibbles or mere antiquarian con- 
jecture. The editorial and critical mind has 
most often failed by its inability to follow char- 
acter as Shakespeare, by carefully laid plot and 
circumstance, brings it to our attention. In 
explaining cruxes by a knowledge of plot and 
character, therefore, we are not devoting our 
time to a mere word or line; we are, in a most 
important way, throwing light upon the whole 
work. 

Let me invite the reader to go back a few 
lines and see how interestingly Shakespeare re- 
veals character in this play. The present lines 
come in the course of,a warm argument between 
three men who are debating the advisability of 
leading their troops into battle. There is a 
fourth also — Mowbray — who is the sort of 
officer who says nothing, but listens till the 
matter is decided and at once becomes a man 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I37 

of action. These four, the Archbishop, Hast- 
ings, Mowbray and Bardolph are in command 
of the rebel forces. But they have been dis- 
appointed by the failure of Northumberland 
to unite himself with them; and now they are 
arguing as to whether they should engage in 
battle with the king or not. These four men 
are of different and strongly contrasted types 
of character. Shakespeare knew that a thing 
is best defined by comparison and the noting of 
differences; he therefore throws groups of con- 
trasting characters together; and this arrange- 
ment upon his part serves to throw their various 
characteristics into high relief. 

Hastings is a type of man with whom we are 
all famihar. He is too sanguine. Once he has 
started upon an undertaking his hopes com- 
pletely take the place of his judgment; he de- 
ludes himself with the sort of optimism which 
will not look plain facts in the face. When 
circumstances arise which should give him 
pause, he meets the facts by deluding himself 
still further; he cannot admit to his mind any- 
thing which conflicts with his fond hopes. Cool 
judgment is not a part of his makeup;^ he is 
one of the kind who rush forth to disaster and 
only see it afterward. He is for going into 
battle at once. 

Lord Bardolph is the very opposite; he has 
no patience with that visionary, childish spirit 
in a mihtary officer. With him war is cool 
business; and first of all he wants to know the 



138 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

facts. Thus he will decide whether to delay 
for reinforcements, or to lead a forlorn hope, or 
to give over the undertaking entirely. He acts 
upon judgment, and judgment must deal with 
facts; he wishes to have them all before him 
whether they are favorable to his hopes or not. 
Hastings is hasty; he would never do to plan 
a battle or conduct a campaign. But Lord 
Bardolph is a typical commanding General. He 
does not hesitate nor yet rush ahead; he has 
the force of mind to look at facts and insist 
that they be taken into consideration. 

The Archbishop is entirely different; he is 
not a soldier at all. His nature is diplomatic, 
his training is that of the scholar, academic 
and polemic. While the others contrast with 
each other as soldiers, the Archbishop is thrown 
into definite relief by putting him into a posi- 
tion where he had no business in the first 
place — at the head of troops. Not being a 
practical soldier he cannot take the initiative 
in pointing the way to a decision; he wishes to 
hear the various views of the others. But 
while he is no military man he does not there- 
fore abstain from having opinions, one side and 
then the other, but quite the opposite. Being 
a man of polemic training, he says much as the 
argument develops the facts to work on; he 
feels his way and inclines first to a point of 
Lord Bardolph's and then to the more hopeful 
view as Hastings insists upon it. And finally, 
as there is cornplete disagreement between Bar- 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I39 

dolph and Hastings, it is the man of the church 
who really decides to risk the encounter. 

Such is the internal nature of the scene; it is 
a study in character. But in the meantime 
the plot is being advanced; and its effect as a 
whole, in relation to the plot, is to leave us with 
a deep impression of the tickhsh situation of 
the rebel cause. Here we have Mowbray, who, 
though he is Lord Marshal, says practically 
nothing. The Archbishop, who formally opens 
the conference, naturally directs his attention 
to the Lord Marshal first; but he simply defers 
to the opinions of the others and is heard from 
no more till, at the end, he says, "Shall we 
draw our numbers and set on.f"' — a question. 
This, and the fact that the churchman virtually 
decides the military question, in the lack of 
agreement, show us the rebel plight. Having 
now considered the substance of the scene in 
detail, and seen its general function as a unit 
in the plot, we may note how deftly Shake- 
speare does all this. The solution of the crux 
will present itself when we see that it is engaged 
upon the point of character presented by the 
two opposite men, Bardolph and Hastings. 

Opening the argument, Mowbray makes in- 
quiry as to their present numbers and the pros- 
pect of reinforcement. To this Hastings offers 
the answer. 

Hast. Our present numbers grow upon the file 
To five and twenty thousand men of choice; 
And our supphes live largely in the hope 



140 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns 
With an incensed fire of injuries. 

Note the nature of Hastings' answer; they 
are five and twenty men "of choice." The 
number of men alone is not good enough for 
him; he must raise their value by looking at 
them as being more than ordinary men. And 
though Northumberland has so far disappointed 
them by not arriving, Hastings is careful to 
add that Northumberland's "bosom burns" 
with the fire of injuries received from the king 
their foe. 

The character of Lord Bardolph at once as- 
serts itself. He throws aside these mere hope- 
ful expectations and sanguine points of view 
and brings it down to a matter of facts and 
figures as they actually stand here and now. 

L. Bardolph. The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth 
thus; 
Whether our present five and twenty thousand 
May hold up head without Northumberland. 

He is interested in what they may expect 
with their present five and twenty thousand 
(note this point of view). And in what they 
may do without the man who has, so far, not 
arrived, and who may therefore have gone back 
on them. He is not one to rely upon what may 
be in the "bosom" of any man; he wants per- 
formance and not promises. He wants to see 
the soldiers. He has virtually restated the 
question that Mowbray asked, seeing that 
Hastings is the kind to drift away from a plain 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I4I 

question of present facts. Hastings, in reply 
to this question as to whether they may hope 
to succeed without Northumberland, replies: 

Hast. With him we may. 

Hastings is not the kind of man who would 
ever answer, Without him we may not. He 
shuts his eyes to facts. He is a man who will 
not get down to actual facts in present circum- 
stances. Shakespeare is here bringing his char- 
acter before us with stronger emphasis. At 
first he only indicated it in the deftest way, — 
by having him speak of his men as "men of 
choice." We may expect to see this emphasis 
grow stronger, for Shakespeare is particular to 
make his points tacit. 

Hastings' plain answer should have been No. 
Bardolph again brings him back to the case in 
hand. 

Bardolph. Yea, marry, there's the point. 
But if without him we be thought too feeble, 
My judgement is, we should not step too far 
Till we have had his assistance by the hand; 
For in a theme so bloody-faced as this 
Conjecture, expectation and surmise 
Of aids uncertain should not be admitted. 

There is a touch of sarcasm in the, "Yea, 
marry, there's the point!" It is the point which 
Hastings will not answer. His mind is one that 
cannot be made to get down to actual present 
facts. Bardolph speaks of using "judgement" 
as opposed to "conjecture, expectation and sur- 
mise." The Archbishop, seeing the force of 
this, agrees with Bardolph: — 



142 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Archbishop. 'Tis very true, Lord Bardolph; for indeed 
It was young Hotspur's case at Shrewsbury. 

Bardolph, now that the scholarly Archbishop 
has mentioned a precedent, put Hotspur's case 
in very strong terms — a biting reflection on 
Hastings himself. 

Bardolph. It was, my lord; who lined himself with hope, 
Eating the air on promise of supply, 
Flattering himself in project of a power 
Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts: 
And so, with great imagination 
Proper to madmen, led his powers to death 
And winking leap'd into destruction. 

And now Hastings, seeing the rest against 
him, and feeling the sting of this way of putting 
things, replies weakly — 

Hastings. But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt 
To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope. 

This brings us to the "crux." It consists in 
Bardolph's emphatic reply to this view which 
Hastings will persist in. 

Bardolph, disgusted, becomes somewhat sar- 
castic. He intimates that if their present out- 
look is so much a matter of hope — as Hastings' 
unwillingness to look at facts would indicate — 
then their plans are like a bud upon a tree in 
an early spring — more likely to be frost-bitten 
than ever to come to fruit. But before he gives 
this touch of sarcasm, he denies Hastings state- 
ment directly: Yes, it does hurt. 

If there is anything calculated to try Bar- 
dolph's patience it is this, "It never yet did 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I43 

hurt." "Never yet" means in other cases 
heretofore, in general. Hastings seems utterly 
unable to get down to this actual case of 
theirs and take account of present facts. The 
never yet means nothing; it is simply a weak 
way of insisting without reason. And Bar- 
dolph, in replying, refuses to be led off into 
such general instances but insists still more 
strongly — repeatedly — upon sticking to the 
subject. He says: YeSy it does hurt, if this 
business in hand right here and now, this par- 
ticular quality of war — rebellion, this instant 
action we are engaged in, this cause actually 
on foot, lives so in hope, then it does hurt to 
indulge in vague surmises and delude our minds 
with "forms of hope." Or to put it in the 
words of the text: 

L. Bard. Yes, if this present quality of war. 
Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot, 
Lives so in hope as in an early spring 
We see th' appearing buds, which, to prove fruit 
Hope give not so much warrant as despair 
That frosts will bite them. 

These are the very words of the First Folio, 
the original text of this particular passage. 
All editors have had to change words, some 
this word and some that, in the effort to twist 
it into some statement other than it is. But 
could there be a plainer, more specific reply, 
or one which better fits the case and hangs 
grammatically together with closer sense? It 
is all a case of following the argument and 



144 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

having a feeling for the play of character which 
Shakespeare takes so much pains to unfold 
to us. 

These phrases, "this present quality of war," 
and "the instant action," and "a cause on foot" 
are synonymous; and the repetition in different 
forms is simply Bardolph's way of insisting, of 
drilling into Hastings' head, that we must deal 
with the thing before us here and now. After 
"Yes" the words it does hurt are to be under- 
stood. For in giving a direct answer, yes or 
no, the query is included in the sense. If 
the reader will put these words after "Yes" the 
first time he reads the passage for himself, the 
grammatical structure of the sentence will be- 
come so plain that the length of it cannot pos- 
sibly entangle him. Hastings has said, "It 
never yet did hurt," and when a man replies 
Yes to this he means of course, "Yes, it does 
hurt." The shorter form makes Bardolph's 
reply more incisive, curt and direct, in keeping 
with the spirit of the moment. 

If the reader will now examine the various 
texts at the head of this explanation he will 
see that their statements are impossible. 

Neilson's preference, in some regards, is the 
best. But he has^ changed "indeed" to 
"needed," which is unnecessary and has no 
authority. His putting a period after action 
makes a separate statement of what follows: 
"A cause on foot lives so in hope," etc. This 
would refer to all causes, or wars, on foot, and 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I45 

this will not bear examination; for many wars 
actually on foot are very certain in their out- 
come and do not stand so entirely "in hope" 
as is here stated. 

The Globe text is the worst, for it has not 
even the merit of showing that the editors had 
a notion of what they meant themselves — 
which the other renderings, to a certain ex- 
tent, do. 

In point of punctuation, that of Malone, 
which has been much followed, is the best be- 
cause it shows these three phrases as being 
synonymous and parallel. But the change to 
in where the Folio has if, is fatal. It makes 
Bardolph say, "Yes; in this present quality of 
war lives so in hope," which is not even English 
and could not convey any idea. The reason of 
all this is simply that the editors have not had 
the idea themselves; and in editing the text 
they had to make some effort. The passage 
has never been correctly printed. The careless 
punctuation of the First Folio mixed up the 
sense, and since then it has gone from bad to 
worse because of the efforts to make something 
out of it by changing the words. The printers 
of the First Folio could not punctuate; for in 
order to punctuate you must understand the 
sense. In cases where they did not follow the 
drift of things they threw in colons or commas 
at random. The First Folio is the worst 
edited work of any great importance that the 
world has ever seen; the palpable errors run 



146 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

up into many thousands. The original text, 
reproduced exactly, is as follows : — 

L. Bar. Yes, if this present quality of warre 
Indeed the instant action: a cause on foot, 
Lives so in hope: As in an early Spring, 
We see th' appearing buds, etc. 

But, as punctuation is a mere matter of fol- 
lowing the sense, and as Shakespeare's sense is 
so tacit because of the close interrelations and 
organic cogency of his work, it is an easy matter 
to remedy the random commas and colons. 
And when this method makes the most con- 
vincing and luminous sense it is a satisfaction 
to know that we at least have the words that 
Shakespeare wrote. 



THE HUMAN MIND 

Duke S. Dost thou believe, Orlando, that the boy 
Can do all this that he hath promised? 

Orlando. I sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not; 
As those that fear they hope, and know they fear. 

(As You Like It, v, 4, 4) 

The words of this last line have been changed 
in every conceivable way in the effort to get a 
meaning out of it. Close study over the pos- 
sible idea began with Bishop Warburton and 
Samuel Johnson, since when dozens of editors 
and critics have offered emendations on the 
theory that the difficulty is due to typographical 
error. As none of these conjectures have 
proved self-evident, the Globe marks it as a 
crux. It is still suspected of being a "corrupt 
line." 

The words are correct as they stand. The 
line deals with the faculty of apperception; 
and Shakespeare is applying this peculiar 
ability of the mind to the most embarrassing 
problem with which it can deal — the struggle 
between hope and reason. It could not possibly 
be expressed more exactly than in the above 
words. 

Shakespeare is here dealing with a man 
whose mind is under the influence of the most 
passionate hope a man may have — that of 



148 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

love. The fulfillment of his hope is made to 
rest on the slightest of all forms of evidence, a 
promise. The promise in this case is not made 
by the other person involved, but by a mere 
boy who has no apparent ability to bring it to 
pass; the boy's promise is beyond all reason. 
Thus we have an inward contest of the strongest 
kind — the contest between hope, which is 
always inclined to believe without evidence, 
and reason, which does not believe except with 
evidence. The man tries to make up his mind, 
and, as this is impossible, the mind's attention 
is turned toward itself and is driven to an at- 
tempt at self-analysis — apperception. 

Orlando is deeply in love with a nobleman's 
daughter. He has not courted her, has not 
even mentioned his love to her, and he is away 
off in the forest where she, it would seem, 
could not possibly be. Along comes a boy 
who most emphatically promises that he will 
bring the young woman in a short while and 
that she will at once marry him. 

The human mind, with its embarrassing ap- 
perceptive faculty, could hardly be put in a 
more distressing plight than such an inward 
struggle — the contest between hope and rea- 
son over so important and so insistent a thing 
as love. A man cannot stop thinking about it 
and yet he can never come to any reasonable 
conclusion. 

We only hope in a case of doubt. Doubt 
arises from a lack of evidence. To believe 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I49 

without evidence is not reason but delusion; 
therefore hope is more or less self-delusion. 
And the human mind is so constituted that it 
is aware of its weakness for self-delusion. Right 
here it is possible to get into a most perplexing 
difficulty with ourselves. 

What takes place is as follows. Orlando's 
mind goes willingly to the belief of that which 
he so ardently desires. This is natural; he 
finds himself believing it. But it occurs to 
him that he is being led into belief by mere 
hope and against all reason. Maybe it is just 
delusion on his part. At the same time the 
thing may actually come to pass, in which case 
it is a fact and nothing else; but this he cannot 
know though he would like to. He is therefore 
afraid that it is only hope on his part; or, in 
other words, he fears he hopes. And to fear 
that you only hope is to go over to doubt 
completely. 

But this is an unwelcome state of mind to 
him; the doubt gives him pain because it is so 
much against his desires. And he is in the 
greatest anxiety, the utmost stress of mind, 
regarding the truth of the matter. He has 
been correcting his mind against delusion, and 
now it occurs to him that the mind may be 
overfearful of delusion and exaggerate its own 
case. As he is conscious of his own extreme 
anxiety, he sees that the mind, working in 
such stress and completely in the dark, may 
correct itself too much. Being awake to this, • 



150 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

he knows he fears; and in this knowledge that 
the mind may be influenced as much by fear 
of delusion as by hope of fulfillment, the recent 
verdict of reason is discountenanced and hope 
gains the ascendency again. Therefore he 
believes. 

We here see depicted the alternation between 
the emotions, which are unstable in their nature, 
and the intellect, which attempts to hold its 
own at every relapse. 

Doubt is repugnant to the human mind, es- 
pecially in a case where one's whole happiness 
is involved. Orlando found his opinion changing 
back and forth a great many times: thus his 
mind's attention was called to itself. The al- 
ternation is that between doubt and hope — 
between being afraid that you are only hoping 
and knowing that the mind may be too much 
influenced by this fear. Orlando's problem 
as to whether the boy could do what he prom- 
ised had to be fought out on the battleground 
of reason, for he could not tolerate doubt in a 
thing so vital to his interests; but there was 
no evidence to prove what he wished nor yet 
any positive proof that what the boy said was 
not so. Having beheved because he hoped, 
and disbelieved because he saw it was unrea- 
sonable to believe without evidence, he had to 
do it all over again; for the human mind cannot 
really believe without evidence nor yet utterly 
disbelieve what it ardently desires. And in so 
important a question as that of love it cannot 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I5I 

Stop thinking; therefore he had to keep on 
believing and disbeUeving. 

What Shakespeare has said in this line is 
exactly what takes place in the mind of any 
man under great stress of doubt; it could not 
be more fundamentally put in short. All men 
"fear they hope" — are afraid that they are 
only hoping. And what is this but to doubt 
the workings of the mind itself, for it is the 
mind which does the hoping and then does the 
fearing. In this case all men, being self-con- 
scious, "know they fear." If then we are 
thinkers at all, like Orlando, this fact that the 
mind fears or has an instinct against self-delu- 
sion, will prompt him to think that it may be 
carrying its apprehensiveness too far. And 
this will give more credence to the whisperings 
of hope again — a welcome state of mind but 
one which will not last long because reason will 
not have it. In a case of great importance to 
ourselves we cannot brook doubt; we have got 
to beheve or disbeheve; and if there is no evi- 
dence to work on there is nothing to do but to 
go round the everlasting treadmill of hope and 
doubt, first one and then the other. I do not 
see how Shakespeare could have put this uni- 
versal truth more plainly. 

Why is it all put from the standpoint of 
"those who".'' Because Shakespeare meant it 
as an universal truth. The "those" referred to 
is all of us. Then, too, it is a stroke of human 
nature to have Orlando put it in that way. 



152 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

When we are engaged in self-analysis, the mind 
Stands off to one side, as it were, and contem- 
plates itself; but while it is doing so it considers 
itself as being engaged upon the great subject of 
mind. As a matter of fact we are simply con- 
sidering ourselves, but being wrapped in the 
idea of contemplating mental law and general 
truth it is not natural for us to keep to the 
point of view that we are just considering our- 
selves in person. It is a mood of abstraction, 
of intense absence from ourselves. The meta- 
physician who writes about Mind so abstractly 
knows nothing upon the subject except what 
he learned by looking into his own; but he 
always refers to humanity in general and speaks 
in terms that are equivalent to Orlando's "those 
who." This is one of those quick touches of 
insight, of truth to nature, with which Shake- 
speare is always surprising us. 

The reason this passage has been an incon- 
querable puzzle is simply that it has to do with 
one's self. Commentators are always looking 
into old books or speculating far afield as if 
they did not know that Shakespeare is always 
engaged simply upon human nature — a thing 
that is to be found near at home. And this 
seems to have been too near for the learned 
type of past generations who really raised all 
the confusion by their conjectures. It is 
almost humorous to consider the profound 
Samuel Johnson and the erudite Bishop War- 
burton, whose specialty was metaphysics, look- 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I53 

ing in vain at a few words which simply de- 
scribed their own minds. It goes to show that 
"apperception" and such learned dialect in 
general may be a mere system of words, and 
acquired as such without ever taking the form 
of actual vital knowledge. Here was where 
Shakespeare excelled — in thinking fundamen- 
tally and having his knowledge at first hand. 

In case the reader might be interested in the 
history of this hne I here append a list of emen- 
dations. 

Warburton — As those that fear their hap and know their 
fear. 

Johnson — As those that fear, thy hope, and know thy fear. 
As those that fear with hope and hope with fear. As those that 
fear, thy hope, and now thy fear. 

Heath — As those that fear their hope, and know their fear. 
(Adopted by Capell.) 

Blackstone — As those that feign thy hope, and know thy 
fear. 

MusGRAVE — As those that fear, then hope; and know, then 
fear. 

Mason — As those that fearing hope, and hoping fear. 

Rann — As those that fear thee, hope, and know thee, fear. 

Becket — As those that hope thy fear, then know thy fear. 

Jackson — As those that fear the hope and know the fear. 

Harness — As those that fear may hope, and know they fear. 

Collier MSS. — As those that fear to hope and know thy fear. 

Jervis — As those fear that they hope, and know they fear. 

Bulloch — As those that scarcely hope and now they fear. 

Lettsom — As those that fear their hope, and hope their fear. 
(Adopted by Keightly, 1864.) 

Bailey — As those that fain would hope, and know they fear. 

Gould — As those fear that they hope, and hope they fear. 

The Globe editors (ed. of 1895) — the line is given up 
and queried as hopelessly corrupt. 



154 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Of these conjectures, the one adopted by 
Capell would seem at first to embody the sense 
with fair clearness. But the change of they to 
their makes a fundamental difference in Or- 
lando's state of mind. Orlando did not merely 
fear his hope; he feared that he did hope. 
He did not know about it, and was thus in a 
state of confusion. Besides which, Shakespeare's 
statement is that Orlando (true to nature) was 
clinging to the view that, after all, the thing 
might turn out in the end to be true, in which 
case his belief would prove to be no delusion 
at all but the belief of a fact. Thus the original 
passage shows that Orlando was in doubt 
about his own mind as well as the facts. 
Shakespeare's way of saying it is exact; and 
if an editor felt the necessity of altering the 
words it shows that he was laboring under 
some misconception. 



PAINTED HOPE 

This minion stood upon her chastity, 

Upon her nuptial vow, her loyalty, 

And with that painted hope braves your mightiness. 

(Titus Andronicus, ii, 3, 126) 

After studying all the emendations and 
conjectures from the time of the earliest critics, 
White gave up this passage with the note : — 
"A line manifestly, and it would seem hope- 
lessly, corrupt. But perhaps we might read. 
And with that faint hope braves, &c." The 
Globe editors mark the line containing painted 
hope with the obolus. 

The speaker is the brutish Demetrius who 
is the son of the no less bestial Queen Tamora. 
The chaste Lavinia has repelled his advances. 
This "painted hope" contains a point of view 
which exactly fits the character and the cir- 
cumstances. 

If Lavinia, when he made his advances, had 
given him strictly to understand that she 
hated him; if she had met him with a tongue- 
lashing in good round unfeminine terms, she 
would have done something to dissipate that 
dream of lust and disenchant his passion. If 
she had conducted herself like a virago and put 
her refusal in terms of hate, she would have 



156 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

been doing something that a man like himself 
could understand. And it would have operated 
somewhat to disillusionize him. 

But the gentle Lavinia based her refusal upon 
her nuptial vows, her chastity, her loyalty to 
another. Not her mere personal value nor her 
hatred of him, but in terms that are born of 
her ideals, her goodness. Nothing could give 
more promise to such a man. For strange as 
it may seem when we think of it, lust at its 
lowest devours nothing with such relish as 
goodness (a point we see illustrated in Measure 
for Measure) ; and as nuptial vows and loyalty 
mean so little to him that they would seem to 
be easily set aside, her mention of no other 
reason for refusing seemed as good as a promise. 
With this understanding we may appreciate 
Shakespeare's way of saying it. 

There are three stages of possession, or three 
degrees of concreteness — a mental vision, a 
picture, and the reality. A painting occupies 
a position half way between the unsubstantial, 
uncertain, self-supported vision of a thing and 
the thing itself. Now when Lavinia gave him 
such refusals his hope of success became more 
vivid. When she spoke of her chastity and 
gave excuses that w^re no real excuses to him, 
she only aggravated his passion and seemed to 
be artfully drawing him on; and only to 
refuse him. It was as if she had painted the 
picture of his success with her own hands, or 
in her own person, and held it up before him. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 1 57 

She made herself a "painted hope." This is 
simply a hope whose pictures are more vivid, 
more real, than the uncertain visions of hope 
unassisted. 

Demetrius is telling this to his equally low- 
minded mother to arouse her anger. The 
point of view is that Lavinia, in thus refusing 
the royal son, was making light of the queen's 
royalty, Demetrius, in this regard of privi- 
leged sonship, is like Cloten in Cymbeline. 

Emendations 

Johnson and Steevens — And with that painted braves 
your mightiness. 

Collier MSS. — And with that painted shape she braves 
your mightiness. R. Grant White — And with that faint 
hope braves your mightiness. Cartwright — And with that 
painting, etc. Orger — And with that painted show, etc. 
Warburton (1747) — And with that painted cope she braves 
your mightiness (adopted by Theobald). Present-day editions 
follow First Folio as hopelessly corrupt. 



HIGHER ITALY 

King Farewell young lords; 

Whether I live or die, be you the sons 

Of worthy Frenchmen: let higher Italy, — 

Those bated that inherit but the fall 

Of the last monarchy, — see that you come 

Not to woo honor but to wed it. 

(All's Well, ii, I, 12) 

The very first instinct of aristocracy is to 
discountenance the upstart. Consider, then, 
what a king's view would be who was simply 
the head of the aristocracy of his country. 
He would hardly hold up for emulation or 
recognition a new aristocracy in another coun- 
try; for they would necessarily be people who 
had achieved their position by the overthrow 
of the royal line. To his own noblemen he 
would hardly speak of them as being worthy 
of consideration. 

By higher Italy, the king means the higher 
classes of Italy. At the time this play was 
written, "Italy" was nothing more than a 
geographical name; it consisted of republics 
such as Venice and Genoa and various little 
monarchies. The young French noblemen, 
finding things dull at home and not yet having 
distinguished themselves in war, were going 
abroad to take part in one of the wars which 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 1 59 

were always going on between these countries. 
They were fighting, not for a cause, but purely 
for emulation — this we must keep strictly in 
mind if we wish to understand this much- 
mooted passage. They wished to win their 
spurs among the noblemen of other countries 
and return home covered with laurels; thus 
they would keep up the traditions of their own 
fathers who were essentially men-at-arms. 
The king is here advising the young aristocrats 
who are thus starting out. Their whole stand- 
point, that of emulation, is strongly set forth — 
**Let higher Italy see,'' etc. As an exception 
to what he means by higher Italy, he is careful 
to add, parenthetically, that he bates (cuts 
off or excepts) those that inherit but the fall 
of the last monarchy. He means by this, all 
those who have recently set up as aristocrats — 
whose only inheritance is the recent overthrow 
of a monarchy. The ideal of long lineage 
must be kept up in a kingdom because it is upon 
this that the stability of the throne is based. 
Thus the whole course of history shows us that 
however much kings may fight among them- 
selves, each will defend the other from an upris- 
ing among his own people; and this duty was, 
in Shakespeare's day, and much later, the very 
law of nations. Kings have a common cause; 
it is as natural as the law of self-preservation; 
and if aristocracy could be suddenly achieved 
and recognized there would be constant tempta- 
tion to overthrow the ruling power. 



l6o SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Even Elizabeth declared to Pvlurray her 
intention of keeping Mary on the Scottish 
throne when her own subjects rebelled, for she 
said it was ''contrary to Scripture and un- 
reasonable that the head should be subject to 
the foot." And Catherine de Medici wrote 
to her "to persevere in the same opinion which 
you have hitherto maintained, that princes 
should assist each other to chastise and punish 
subjects who rise against them, and are rebels 
to the sovereign." In Shakespeare's day this 
was not simply a law of nations; it was the 
law among monarchs themselves. 

In the present passage Shakespeare is de- 
picting aristocracy true to life, as it basically 
was. The king therefore, in giving his first 
advice to the young noblemen who had just 
come to his court, naturally held up to them 
that ideal which is the very hope of kings. It 
is as if he had interrupted himself to remark: — 
"Of course I do not mean these upstarts, for 
we none of us consider them when we think 
of winning honor." What could be more 
natural for a king to say under these particular 
circumstances? The first thing young noble- 
men should be reminded of is the basic law of 
aristocracy. However we may differ as to the 
identity of "those bated" there should be no 
doubt, upon the most Shakespearean grounds 
of human nature, as to what is meant by 
"higher" Italy. 

Beginning with Hanmer (1744) and extend- 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE l6l 

ing up to the present day, the passage has 
refused to resolve itself into a general con- 
sistency. Coleridge did his best with it and 
wrote in his notes: "As it stands, in spite of 
Warburton's note, I can make nothing of it." 
Many have interpreted "higher" to mean 
northern Italy; but this has been open to 
many objections and cannot be made to prove 
itself. That the word refers to the higher 
classes of Italy has seemed obvious to others; 
but the difficulty has been to define "those 
bated" in a way that would harmonize. 
Hanmer changed the latter words to "those 
bastards," and this, after being long used by 
editors, was favored by Coleridge. Capell 
made it "those bated ones" in the sense of 
people reduced in fortune; Bulloch suggested 
"those fated," Spence, "those baited," Schmidt 
defined the word as meaning "beaten down." 
It is now regarded as hopeless and is therefore 
indicated as such in the Globe. As Gollancz 
says, "the passage is probably corrupt." 
Whatever it is, it is not corrupt. 



THE SPIRIT OF CAPULET 

Capulet. Go to, go to; , 

You are a saucy boy. Is 't so indeed? 
This trick may chance to scath you; I know what. 
You must contrary me! Marry 't is time — 

(Romeo and Juliet, i, 5, 87) 

The period in that third Hne is in the wrong 
place. It should come after musty not after 
what. 

Old Capulet has been circulating amongst 
his guests at the wedding feast, complimenting 
the ladies and twitting the young ones — all 
agog with hospitality. Suddenly he finds it 
necessary to check young Tybalt who is on the 
point of marring the occasion by picking a 
quarrel with Romeo. Imagine the gracious 
and hospitable old aristocrat — he who sum- 
marily ordered "twenty cunning cooks" and 
then referred to the results as "a trifling foolish 
banquet," — and let the ear decide just what 
he said as he exercised his authority over this 
rash and stubborn young nephew. He said 
with firmness and plain definite statement, "I 
know what you must." He hardly replied with 
that half meaningless and modern slang-sound- 
ing phrase, "I know what." Or consider the 
remaining half of the remark as altered by 
punctuation. Having made his plain state- 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 1 63 

ment of authority he exclaimed with fiery 
brusqueness, '^Contrary me!'' He certainly did 
not say, "You must contrary me!" This 
long-drawn-out remark is weak, pleading and 
complaining; no actor could make anything ef- 
fective and fiery out of it. Following the shorter 
sentence, "I know what," it is especially flat; 
a shorter remark should follow a longer state- 
ment — it shows his ire rising. Capulet, as 
Shakespeare has already let us see, is not a 
weak complaining sort of person. 

Certainly we have been reading and re- 
editing Shakespeare all these generations with- 
out seeing that this is bad work upon the part 
of the early editor who saw fit to write Shake- 
speare in this way. 

As for authority in punctuating the line, there 
is none, the loosely punctuated First Folio 
having only commas, as follows — 

This trick may chance to scath you, I know what. 
You must contrary me, marry 't is time. 

It is purely a matter of insight, not scholar- 
ship. The Globe uses a colon where Neilson 
(1906) uses a period, but this is all one as in- 
dicating a full stop after what. As for myself, 
all the editors in the world might insist upon 
having the passage as it now stands in standard 
editions; but I would reply — Not in any 
Shakespeare of mine. 



HER CS, HER U'S AND HER T'S 

Malvolio. By my life, this is my lady's hand. These be her 
very C's, her U's and her T's; and thus makes she her great P's. 
It is, in contempt of question, her hand. 

Sir Andrew. Her C's, her U's and her T's; why that? 

(Twelfth Night, ii, 5, 95) 

The Shakespeare reader will here recognize 
an old friend. This cabalistic combination of 
letters has withstood the attacks of all the 
commentators, and all we may know about it 
now is that it is either "purposely meaning- 
less," or else, if there is a meaning, Shakespeare 
buried it so deep that no one may ever un- 
earth it. 

A critic familiar with Shakespeare's method 
ought to be able to decide at once, even though 
he could not solve the crux, that the author is 
here dealing with a definite meaning. In the 
first place, he has made these three letters the 
subject of particular dramatic action. Malvo- 
lio, coming down the garden path and picking 
up the letter which the humorous conspirators 
have put there, is himself the one whom we are 
expecting to see made a fool of — "a con- 
templative idiot" as the mischievous Maria 
explained in getting up the plot. But just at 
the moment when we are all prepared to 
laugh at Malvolio as he maunders over the 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 165 

meanings of the letter, we are taken by sur- 
prise. From the box-tree where they are 
hiding, there bobs up one of the conspirators 
themselves with the query of "why that?" 
Even before the pompous Butler himself is 
entrapped, one of the conspirators is so struck 
by something that he falls into the trap. 

This sudden turning of our attention, so con- 
trary to the direction in which we were look- 
ing for the fun, signahzes these letters to our 
mind; and Aguecheek's "why that?" is vir- 
tually a question for the audience to consider. 
In the second place, it will be observed that 
there are four letters. But Sir Andrew pays 
no attention to one of them; he is interested 
in the other three. This shows mental action 
on Sir Andrew's part; the three letters have a 
particular meaning to him else he would not 
jump at them and let the other go by the 
board. Shakespeare did this purposely; he 
included the superfluous letter just to this end. 
It is his psychologic mechanism for showing 
particular mental action on Sir Andrew's part 
with regard to a meaning. And the "why 
that?" directs it specifically to the attention 
of the audience. Thus we see that the three 
letters are made the subject of a little separate 
dramatic study to give them the emphasis of 
action; and after this emphasis on the mind 
the cue is given that there is a meaning 
intended. 

Such should be our a priori theory, as critics. 



l66 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

But the Elizabethan spectator would need no 
theory. The letters have significance in the 
fact that they spell cut. And if we have fol- 
lowed the play with live interest in every word, 
we will see that this word is the very one which 
would be calculated to catch Sir Andrew's 
attention and arouse his superstitious fancy. 
The senile Sir Andrew is spending all of his 
time and much of his money in trying to get 
the rich Countess to wife — she who was 
supposed to be the author of the letter. He 
had finally despaired and had decided to give 
up and go home when Sir Toby prevailed upon 
him to stay; and the last thing Sir Toby said 
to him in the scene where we last saw them, 
was — 

"Send for money, knight; if thou hast her 
not i' the end call me cut." 

This tremendous declaration, as I have said, 
was Sir Toby's final word to Sir Andrew when 
we saw them last; it comes at the end of the 
scene. And there is but a short scene between 
that and their present appearance on the stage. 
The word, therefore, boding failure to win her, 
and being deliberately spelled out of the letter, 
would naturally engage Sir Andrew's attention. 
The human mind isjust that superstitious. It 
had been impressed on his mind in connection 
with the Countess, and these first letters from 
her supposed epistle could hardly help speHing 
the word to him. 

"Cut," if it meant the same in Shakespeare's 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 1 6/ 

day as it does on any farm today, refers to an 
animal that has been desexed. We see this 
in "1st Henry IV," where the Carrier says, 
"beat Cut's saddle and put a few flocks in the 
point," the name evidently referring to a geld- 
ing. For such a superannuated and harmless 
old chap as Sir Toby to swear by this word to 
the aged suitor who was even more senile than 
himself, was funny in the first instance. 
Some Shakespeareans, as Clark and Wright, 
seem to understand "cut" as referring merely 
to a bob-tailed horse, or to a dog in like condi- 
tion. But the dictionary, because of the well- 
known and long established horseman's usage, 
includes the other. However, whatever we 
may accept for the meaning, it was the tallest 
oath Sir Toby knew how to swear, the most 
reflecting on his much-prized manhood; and 
the Elizabethan audience, well versed in all 
such allusions, would hardly need to be hit on 
the head to see the meaning in it. They would 
only need to have their attention directed to 
it particularly; and this Shakespeare did by 
making it the centre of an ingenious and 
diverting piece of dramatic by-play. When we 
consider the surprise of the audience in having 
their attention directed in the very opposite 
quarter to that in which they were expecting 
to find the "idiot," and imagine Sir Andrew 
bobbing up with this superstitious inquiry, and 
remember what "cut" would signify as used by 
an old sporting gentleman like Sir Toby, whose 



l68 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

failing was to imagine himself as being still in 
the hey-dey of his virility, the whole com- 
bination was calculated to make the audience 
split its sides with laughter. 

While this is but the explanation of a trifling 
comedy allusion, the management and method 
of the dramatic incident is as d^ep as any in 
more serious scenes; it shows Shakespeare's 
practice of keeping regard for what would 
naturally be in a character's mind and having 
the event result from inner action. In Leontes' 
puzzling soliloquy, which I explained as the 
turning-point of "Twelfth Night," we saw that 
frequently the speech and action of a character 
is but the outcropping of inner action — the 
words we are expected to see through. This is 
essentially the same, as indeed, are a large 
proportion of these supposedly meaningless 
passages. 

The reader will now ask — What is the 
meaning of the letters M. O. A. I. as read by 
Malvolio .f' We might as well inquire what 
what was the meaning of the P which Sir 
Andrew did not bother about. We should 
remember that none of this has any meaning in 
itself. The C. U. T. only has a meaning as it 
appealed to something already in Sir Andrew 
Aguecheek's mind. The other puzzle serves its 
purpose for the "contemplative idiot" Mal- 
volio to puzzle over; and as Shakespeare has 
put no emphasis on it nor signified a cue, we 
are not supposed to bother about it. But, by 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 1 69 

the same reasoning, we are supposed to find 
a meaning in the other; for we have read 
Shakespeare to Httle effect if we do not under- 
stand him well enough to know that he never 
took pains without a purpose. 



THE TIME OF SCORN 

but, alas, to make me 
A fixed figure for the time of scorn 
To point his slow unmoving finger at. 

(Othello, iv, 2, 53) 

Attempts to take this figure of speech apart 
and examine its works have resulted in much 
disagreement. Partisans of the First Foho, 
which reads "slow and moving" ask those who 
prefer the Quarto, how it is possible for a 
thing to be slow and unmoving. Again, does 
the imagery refer to a timepiece, a dial.f' 
Steevens thought it did; Knight and others 
have thought that it has no such implication. 
The difference of opinion still exists, editors of 
annotated editions drawing upon conflicting 
notes according to their fancy. 

I think the standard modern editions are 
right in giving the Quarto reading as Shake- 
speare's and that the reference is to a timepiece. 
The trouble seems to be that no one has been 
able to set forth the point of view in a state- 
ment that is quite convincing. My own point 
of view is as follows. 

The Germans have an expression, "to write 
it on the town clock," the meaning of which 
is to advertise a thing in the most public 
place. I have always seen it used in a spirit 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I7I 

of ridicule, as when a man has been caught in 
some misdeed and persists in writing and talk- 
ing publicly in his own defense, thus spreading 
his disgrace wider. He writes it on the town 
clock. As this expression is a folk saying 
which is probably very old, and as it has been 
caught up and perpetuated till it is virtually a 
part of the language, it shows that there is 
nothing strained or unnatural about it. So 
there would be nothing unnatural in Shake- 
speare's expressing pubHc disgrace in a similar 
way. 

But Shakespeare carries it a little farther. 
Othello feels as if he were the very figure, the 
symbol, the standard of public reference for 
marital disgrace. He feels as if his figure or 
person stood for obloquy itself just as authori- 
tatively as a figure on a clock stands for the 
hour itself; and when people look at him it is 
time to scorn. Hence "time of scorn." So 
deep is his consciousness that he feels as if it 
were always that time of day with him; hence 
"slow unmoving finger." This "time of scorn" 
is a very Shakespearean style of expression, as 
when Hamlet says "It is the breathing time 
of day with me," or, as in "Love's Labour's 
Lost," "What time o' day — The hour that 
fools should ask." I think that future annota- 
tors would supply the deficiency in their eluci- 
dation by explaining that this is supposed to 
be a public clock. 

As to the literal truth of "slow unmoving" 



172 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

this is a very good description of the hand of 
a clock; it is even psychologically perfect when 
we consider that we are aware through our 
intellect that the motionless hand is moving 
whereas our sense of sight tells us that it is not. 
The Folio reading, however, is mere tau- 
tology and un-Shakespearean; for it is hardly 
necessary to explain that a thing which is slow 
is also moving. 



GRATIANO'S MEANING 

You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid; 
You loved, I loved for intermission. 
No more pertains to me my lord than you. 
(Merchant of Venice, iii, 2, 201, Globe edition 1895) 
You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid; 
You loved, I loved; for intermission 
No more pertains to me, my lord, than you. 

(Neilson 1906) 

As will be observed in the above examples, 
the meaning here is so uncertain that the most 
scholarly modern editions make of the lines 
entirely different statements. And in neither 
case has the meaning of the statement been 
finally estabhshed; it all remains a matter of 
conjecture. 

Theobald (1733) did away with any punc- 
tuation after "intermission" and expressed 
himself so positively, and with such disdain 
for those who might think there could be such 
a thing as loving for intermission, that several 
generations followed him. The resulting state- 
ment, "intermission no more pertains to me, 
my lord, than you," failed to satisfy the intellect 
of later scholars inasmuch as its meaning is not 
certain and convincing. And so we find the 
Globe text, whose readings have long been the 
standard of Shakespearean scholarship, putting 



174 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

a period after intermission. White and Staun- 
ton, in their editions, agree with this rendering. 
But the explanations that have been offered are 
so far from settHng the matter that the most 
recent thoroughly edited and scholarly edition, 
Neilson's Cambridge, goes back to the rendering 
of Theobald. As for the original sources of 
the play, nothing can be positively determined 
by reference to them, because, with the usual 
loose punctuation of the early printers, there is 
a comma after intermission — neither a full 
stop to end the sense there nor yet a punctua- 
tion which would allow the sense to go uninter- 
ruptedly on. Shakespeare's meaning therefore 
we shall have to decide for ourselves. 

My object will be to show that Shakespeare 
intended to have a full stop, a period or semi- 
colon, after the word "intermission." If I am 
to settle the meaning so positively that there 
can be no more doubt in the matter, it is evi- 
dent that I must go about it in a way somewhat 
different from the method of mere verbal con- 
jecture. We shall not, therefore, start in by 
any quibbling over the word "intermission," 
what it might or might not mean. I shall 
simply place a period after it and then turn 
our attention to the sentence that follows — 
"No more pertains to me, my lord, than you." 
If we find that this has a meaning which exactly 
fits the situation, and which is, upon further 
view, essential to the scene as a whole, we shall 
know positively that it is a sentence in itself 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I75 

and that therefore a period must cut it off from 
what goes before. It will then be time to con- 
sider the sentence that goes before and which 
ends with "intermission." Here again we shall 
adopt the method of showing the meaning not 
merely in character and immediate circum- 
stance, but by the requirements of the scene 
itself — the very dramatic exigencies as viewed 
by Shakespeare himself in practical playwright- 
ing. In short, we must go about these matters 
in a larger way; and if the meaning exactly fits 
all the requirements, there can be no doubt left. 

First, then, let us ask — What does Gratiano 
mean by saying, "No more pertains to me, my 
lord, than you"? 

This second scene of the third act shows us 
the happy outcome of the striving of several 
lovers for the hand of Portia. We have been 
held in great suspense as the suitors from various 
countries came and took their chances with the 
three closed coffers that decided their fate, and 
finally our solicitude is all for Bassanio whom 
we see that Portia loves. Bassanio chooses 
the casket of lead and is successful. Here 
Shakespeare brings the subordinate characters 
forward; it is a grand ensemble of happy people. 
Two happy households stand united through 
their master and mistress; the general atmos- 
phere is that of graceful compliment. 

At this happy climax in the fortunes of the 
principal characters, we now suddenly find, to 
fill the measure of marriage to overflowing, 



176 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

that a love episode has been going on between 
the subordinate characters. Gratiano, a mem- 
ber of Bassanio's train, has wooed Portia's 
maid, Nerissa. But Nerissa has been very 
tantalizing in her reply. She is so utterly de- 
voted to her mistress that she has refused to 
say "yes" to any proposal that might take her 
away from Portia's household; therefore she 
made her answer depend upon whether Bassanio 
chose the right casket. In short, if Bassanio 
wins Portia the two households will be united, 
in which case Nerissa will accept Gratiano. 

When Bassanio wins, therefore, it is of great 
moment to Gratiano; and he immediately 
steps forward to ask his master's permission to 
be married at the same time. He receives 
most cordial assent: — 

Bassanio. With all my heart, so thou can'st get a wife. 

Bassanio has not known about this wooing; 
he does not now know who the lady is. Grati- 
ano does not now tell him at once in a mere 
abrupt statement; he proceeds to break the 
news gradually, drawing to the point in the 
most beautiful general aspect of the situation. 
Bassanio has won him a wife at the same time 
he won Portia for himself; therefore Gratiano 
replies : 

I thank your lordship, you have got me one. 
My eyes, my lord, can look as swift as yours: 
You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid; 
You loved, I loved for intermission. 
No more pertains to me, my lord, than you. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 177 

What Gratiano means by this last line 
must be evident enough. It is simply his way 
of saying, by way of graceful compliment, that 
he has not gone outside of Bassanio's household 
for a wife. When Bassanio won Portia, her 
household was annexed to his own, and this in- 
cluded the maid Nerissa; thus the one who 
pertains in so momentous a relation to Gratiano 
also pertains to Bassanio. Gratiano is allowing 
Bassanio to guess the truth while he approaches 
it with these general statements; and in his 
large point of view "No more pertains to me, 
my lord, than you," there is the fine implication 
that it has always been thus between them. 
Even in his marriage he has not gone outside 
of his master's circle of interests; they are now 
bound by a further tie. This way of looking 
at things gives the audience an added insight 
of how happily everything has turned out. 
And could anything surpass this in the way of 
happy and graceful compliment? 

Gratiano has followed Bassanio faithfully 
and made Bassanio's interests paramount to 
his own. The remark, therefore, besides de- 
scribing the immediate circumstances exactly, 
is in strict keeping with the speaker's character. 
It is this loyalty to another that Gratiano stands 
for in the play. The meaning being plain, it 
makes this line a statement by itself; and this 
being the case we see that the preceding line is 
a statement by itself with a full stop after 
"intermission." 



178 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

We may now inquire into the meaning of 
this preceding hne — 

"You loved, I loved for intermission." 

Here Gratiano gracefully acknowledges that 
his own love affair is quite secondary, in 
importance, to that of his master. It is figura- 
tively referred to as a mere time-filling or stop- 
gap performance. Theobald, who could see no 
sense in this line as an independent statement, 
rather disdainfully challenged any one to ex- 
plain how a person might be said to love "for 
intermission." Evidently Theobald was not 
aware that all through Shakespeare's plays 
there are lovers who love for intermission and 
clowns who clown for intermission. In recent 
times critics have become aware that all through 
Shakespeare's work there is a regular succession 
of light and serious moods in alternation, the 
former to give the mind an intermission from 
the latter. These clowns and lovers are sec- 
ondary or subordinate to the main action; and 
in the present case Shakespeare seems to be 
using a word out of his own workshop. Gra- 
tiano, in suddenly obtruding his own affairs in 
the midst of his master's happy love scene, 
wishes to say that .his little adventure in matri- 
mony is a mere side-issue, quite subordinate, 
to the main event; he therefore speaks of his 
own wooing as if it were a thing which would 
be noted only during the intervals of the other 
by way of intermission. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 1 79 

Shakespeare, in introducing the extra pair of 
lovers at the very cHmax of the scene between 
Portia and Bassanio, had to be careful not to 
let it rise to the same plane of interest. It is 
therefore introduced with a slight touch of 
humor; for it is certainly humor which affects 
us when we learn that the tantahzing Nerissa 
regards love in such a light that she will only 
marry in case her mistress goes along. The 
main event is pleasingly aggrandized by this 
deference of maid and man; and we are pleased 
by this little ghmpse of Gratiano's good fortune, 
suddenly and shortly introduced. Shakespeare 
helped to keep it on a lower plane by having 
Gratiano tacitly refer to it as such; and as 
the episode is itself in the nature of a diversion 
from the more serious scene, the dramatist, by 
this allusion to it as an "intermission" would 
seem to be speaking out of his own playwright- 
ing policy. But however this may be, we may 
certainly understand, with no straining of 
words, that Gratiano means that his love affair 
is a secondary matter which would only attract 
attention betweenwhiles. And this is quite 
in keeping with the self-sacrificing and devoted 
character which he upholds. 

Those who render the passage so that it 
reads, "for intermission no more pertains to 
me, my lord, than you," explain it as meaning 
that Bassanio was incessant in love-making, 
and Gratiano was the same. We can hardly 
believe that Shakespeare introduced this pas- 



l8o SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

sage to point out that Bassanio was always at 
it and that his man Gratiano was just Hke him — 
always at it. Besides dragging everything 
down to such a common plane, it destroys that 
subordination and deference to the main char- 
acters which is so pleasing and so dramatically 
important, I believe I have explained these 
hnes in a way that makes their intention clear; 
and I have dwelt upon them somewhat at 
length in the hope that future editions may 
punctuate in the way which will admit of the 
meaning which, I think, Shakespeare intended. 

Earher in this scene, at line 191, there is a 
passage which is the cause of much disagree- 
ment and conjecture. It is at the point where 
Gratiano steps forward to congratulate Bas- 
sanio upon his good fortune. Without taking 
particular issue with any of the various commen- 
tators, I might here offer my understanding of 
the passage, especially as it is different from 
any view I have seen. 

My lord Bassanio and my gentle lady,, 
I wish you all the joy that you can wish; 
For I am sure you can wish none from me. 

We should here ask ourselves — as Shake- 
speare always asked himself in creating a char- 
acter — What was Gratiano thinking.? He is 
thinking that if Bassanio and Portia were to 
have the fullest scope of their desires, if they 
were to wish without Hmit, there is one thing 
that neither of them ever could wish. Neither 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE l8l 

Portia nor Bassanio could wish to have the 
other away. Consequently Gratiano is willing 
to let them wish anything and he will subscribe 
to it beforehand; for he is certain that their 
wishing could never result in separating him- 
self from Nerissa. For has not Gratiano's 
possession of her been wholly dependent upon 
the union of the other two? This is the very 
basis of the whole episode. 

It is another beautiful expression of the four- 
fold happiness of the two couples; and it is not 
as ingenious as it might seem, for Gratiano is 
well aware that if Portia were ever to be sepa- 
rated from Bassanio, away would go Nerissa. 
It is a thought that lurks deep in his heart — 
but he is not afraid; he is wilhng to abide by 
any fortune they might wish, for he knows they 
could not wish themselves apart; hence he runs 
no risk of being separated from his own Nerissa. 

Conjecture upon this passage began with 
Hanmer in 1744, but the succeeding rendi- 
tions failed to satisfy. Staunton paraphrased it, 
"For I am sure you can wish none which I do 
not wish you." Rolfe's conjecture is that 
Gratiano was thinking that Portia and Bassanio 
could wish no joy away from him "because you 
have enough yourselves." 



A MASTER OF WORDS 

Wolsey. I do profess 

That for your highness' good I ever labored 
More than mine own; that am, have, and will be — 
Though all the world should crack their duty to you. 
And throw it from their soul; though perils did 
Abound, as thick as thought could make 'em, and 
Appear in forms more horrid, — yet my duty, 
As doth a rock against the chiding flood, 
Should the approach of this wild river break, 
And stand unshaken yours. 

(Henry VIII, iii, 2, 192) 

This passage, according to the Globe editors, 
contains the one crux in Henry VIII. They 
mark it on "that am, have, and will be." Gol- 
lancz, who shares the general uncertainty as 
to whether the words even "represent" what 
Shakespeare wrote, notes a certain emendation 
as follows: — "Instead of 'that am, have, and 
will be, it has been proposed to read, 'that am 
your slave and will be'; this would get rid of 
the awkward have = have been, but probably 
the Hne is correct as it stands." 

Before starting to explain this passage let me 
ask the reader to place a period or colon after 
will be, and eliminate the second dash so that 
all that follows will be is unbroken in sense. 
Read now this part, beginning with Though and 
observe that it is all that could be desired in 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 1 83 

the way of clear, logical statement and of close 
grammatical structure. 

Next, try to read it according to the present- 
day punctuation, as above. There is a part 
that comes between dashes. Try to connect 
the parts of the statement before and after the 
dashes and it will be found impossible to make 
sense out of it. The point of view is contra- 
dictory. Shift the dash about, as for instance, 
before that, and try again. It will be found 
impossible to make a cogent statement out of 
the passage as a whole by any such means. It 
would therefore be desirable to have all this 
part beginning with Though a complete and 
separate statement. But this would require of 
us to make complete and separate sense out of 
the three lines preceding; and now the question 
arises: Can this be done? And if done, can it 
be shown that this way of reading the passage 
is what Shakespeare intended.^ Let us devote 
our attention then to these first three lines. 

The trouble here is what the words "that am, 
have, and will be," have been taken in a wrong 
sense. That, as here used is not a relative pro- 
noun, but a demonstrative. And the words 
am and have and will-be are nouns. These of 
course are the verbal auxiliaries of English; 
but here, instead of filling their auxiliary func- 
tions they are being referred to as such words, 
for which reason they are nouns by use; and 
this is done to emphasize what Wolsey is pro- 
fessing. 



184 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

It is an interesting fact — or should be to 
one who thinks — that the auxiharies, the help- 
words by which we are enabled to express the 
past and the passive, the present and the fu- 
ture, are but forms of to be and to have. To 
"have" means to own, to possess. To "be" 
means to exist, to live. They refer to life and 
property. As grammatical forms they arise 
spontaneously out of our deep abiding con- 
sciousness of these things that are so important 
to us. They are equivalent to what we mean 
when we say "my own," — our lives and prop- 
erty. These things are so near our conscious- 
ness that we make the idea of them our very 
means of expressing ourselves in those points 
of view which constitute grammar; or language. 
The two auxiliaries together constitute what we 
mean by "my own"; and in this passage they 
are used as being equivalent to the words Wol- 
sey has just said — "More than mine own." 

Now the question arises — Why should Car- 
dinal Wolsey, in the course of a profession of 
loyalty to the king, and especially at the very 
point where he has begun to see that the king 
suspects him, go off into a reference to language 
in the abstract — mere forms of speech. For 
this there are several reasons. 

First, because it is in character. The Cardi- 
nal is a man of dialectic training; his specialty 
is speech. As the king rephed to a preceding 
remark, "You say well"; and again, replying 
to the next declaration of the churchman : 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 185 

'T is well said again; 
And 't is a kind of good deed to say well: 
And yet words are no deeds. 

When Shakespeare creates a man whose edu- 
cation and calHng are essentially polemical, as 
Archbishop Scroop for instance, or Polonius, he 
is careful to bring out that mental bias. Con- 
sider the Archbishop, in the position of a sol- 
dier, weaving subtleties of thought as he answers 
Lord Bardolph regarding his reasons for rebel- 
lion, or Polonius in his wanderings with words. 
Now while Cardinal Wolsey is a quite different 
man from these, he is nevertheless a man whose 
education has consisted of the study of lan- 
guage, both as a linguist and as a diplomat, 
and of points of view that are fundamentally 
metaphysical. Why then, should he not, in an 
occasional side remark, betray that lifelong train- 
ing.? Why should he not drop a remark which 
would fit his character exactly though it would 
not be natural to someone else.? A dramatist 
must take these opportunities of characteriza- 
tion, of deft touches to the dialogue as circum- 
stances arise. In no other way can a character 
be built up and held hfehke before us. 

Second. Wolsey, on the very verge of being 
accused of treason, must put his profession of 
loyalty with the utmost weight. To say that 
"for your highness' good I ever labored more 
than mine own" is not particularly striking or 
convincing. It is just a commonplace state- 
ment; "mine own" is a worn phrase; it does 



1 86 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

not put any vivid emphasis on the speaker's 
complete, self-sacrificing devotion. How is 
Shakespeare going to do this? — by a long and 
wordy passage enumerating the Cardinal's life, 
his property, his every joy and possession? 
Not here, for two reasons — first, because such 
a categorial and conscious emphasis would only 
make the Cardinal's declaration weak, and, 
second, because Shakespeare being a poet, 
must exercise his greatest power, which is that 
of condensation. The Cardinal therefore ap- 
pends to this "mine own," a short meditative 
remark intended to be thrown out as synony- 
mous with it — "that Am, Have, and Will-be." 
What does this say? It impUes the Cardinal's 
life and property and very instinct of existence. 
It does more than this; it not only says it but 
puts signal emphasis upon "mine own." For 
this little remark alludes to the fact that all 
men, all other men, have the selfish instinct 
of clinging to life and property to such an ex- 
tent that it is part of the very means of expres- 
sion — of the mind itself. To give such a view 
of what "mine own" means, as the Cardinal 
conceives it, is to imply at one artful stroke 
that he labors for the king's good to the for- 
getting of his entire instincts of self. Thus it 
puts the emphasis in a place where stress of 
circumstances require such art, and in a way 
that is quite in character. 

Third. Cardinal Wolsey, though a church- 
man by profession and training, was really a 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 187 

politician, and a statesman of no mean capacity. 
He devoted his effort to most practical and 
worldly ends, — wealth and power. At this 
particular stage of the plot, the king is beginning 
to have his suspicions. He expresses them to 
Lovell: 

If we did think 
His contemplation were above the earth, 
And fix'd on spiritual object, he should still 
Dwell in his musings: but I am afraid 
His thinkings are below the moon, not worth 
His serious considering. 

This shows what the problem of political 
success, as it presented itself to the Cardinal, 
consisted in. It consisted in a studied simu- 
lation of being entirely absorbed in spiritual 
and scholarly "musings." Wolsey gradually 
worked forward to wealth and power under cover 
of learned and religious preoccupation which 
averted suspicion of his motives. Note that 
hne, "he should still dwell in his musings." 
Shakespeare thus shows what the king's im- 
pression had been. We thus see the daily prob- 
lem of the Cardinal's life; it was to assume the 
guise of the cleric and the bookman entirely 
engaged in things abstract and metaphysical. 
In order to achieve his ends he had to keep 
before him the conveying of this impression. 

We thus see that such a hne as that we are 
engaged upon would, from purely practical 
considerations, be an excellent thing for the 
Cardinal to say. It is a side-remark, a 
"musing," and the more seemingly abstract 



I»» SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

and preoccupied with scholarly thought the 
better. But what it really says is far from be- 
ing a mere scholar's digression; it says wonders 
and in a most effective way. The Cardinal is 
here simply keeping up the impression he had 
always created. And how is Shakespeare to 
represent character vividly except by such 
strokes of dialogue? 

I have already explained, in dealing with 
Polonius' declaration of utter devotion to King 
Claudius, the great power of a preoccupied 
side-remark (if studiously selected) to carry 
conviction of sincerity — to flatter or convince. 
Wolsey is here doing the same thing and in a 
like connection, a declaration of loyalty. 

Fourth. Shakespeare was himself deeply 
interested in language itself as betraying the 
very fundamental psychology of the human 
mind, unconsciously expressed — its primeval 
native poetry and ways of looking at things. 
We have not read Shakespeare with much in- 
sight if we have not gathered his interest in 
language itself as a study in mind. This I have 
explained in another place in this book. The 
present line, viewed according to my explana- 
tion, is just what he would produce when oc- 
casion off"ered. 

Dialogue has its greatest power when, be- 
sides telling the story, advancing the plot, and 
unfolding character in the light of circumstance, 
it also says something which is intrinsically 
interesting. This was Shakespeare's way of 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 1 89 

working; he could do all these things at once 
and at the same time strike out universal truths 
which are worth considering in themselves. 
Such a line as this is utterly Shakespearean. 

What Wolsey is saying, therefore, is an ob- 
servation on language, the sense of it being as 
if he had put it — "that Am, that Have and 
that Will-be." After catching this grammatical 
construction, it is only incumbent upon us to 
have sufficient insight to see the deep truth in- 
volved and its practical fitness here to plot, 
character and circumstance. 

But, from what I know of the temper of 
Shakespearean criticism today, especially in 
America, this is a view which will not willingly 
be received. Shakespearean criticism in this 
country and England is nothing positive or 
constructive; it is simply a self-conscious pro- 
test against the so-called "metaphysical" ef- 
forts of German criticism. A certain attitude 
having become the fashion, critics carry this 
mere practical playwrighting view of Shake- 
speare to such an extreme that we would not 
allow him to have an idea of any kind. It is 
a mistake. The common-sense attitude toward 
Shakespeare's text is easy to assume; it explains 
nothing worth while and is simply another 
name for mediocrity. 

But despite what I am aware of, I am willing 
to put the present view of Shakespeare's mind 
on paper and let it stand and bide its time. In 
the meantime, what are we to conclude about 



IQO SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

the passage? What we will have to conclude, 
in the end, is that the line has this meaning or 
none at all. By no means of punctuation can 
this whole passage be made one sentence. It 
will remain a "crux" so long as this is attempted. 
It is destined never to have any grammar or 
any sense according to past and present methods 
of procedure. But as soon as we put a period 
after the first three lines we have a statement 
which is clear and grammatical and in all ways 
consistent. This, therefore, is what Shake- 
speare wrote and what he intended to have us 
understand. 

In Tamhurlaine we read (Act iii. Scene 3) : 

Well said, Theridamas! speak in that mood; 
For will and shall best fitteth Tamburlaine. 

Here we see Shakespeare's great contem- 
porary, Marlowe, who was, more than any other 
poet, his model, using the auxiliaries as nouns 
for dramatic emphasis. The italics, which sig- 
nahze the sense, are not my own. Mark, too, 
the play on the grammatical term "mood," 
which drives the sense home. 

Shakespeare was doing the same thing. But 
he did it in a much greater way by making the 
words fit the character of the speaker and at the 
same time giving them organic relation to the 
plot — an ability which, more than any other, 
marks his great dramatic genius. 

I have suggested that the words be capital- 
ized— "that Am, Have, and Will-be." It 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I9I 

would probably be well for editors to print them 
also in italics. If the reader finds that he is not 
now able to catch the deep art in this way of 
saying "mine own," let him re-read what I have 
said about the nature of the auxiliaries — or, for 
a fuller and more intimate exposition, he might 
refer to what is said about the poetry of the 
auxiharies in my "Essays on the Spot." 



PIONED AND TWILLED BRIMS 

Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas 

Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats and pease; 

Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, 

And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep; 

Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, 

Which spongy April at thy best betrims 

To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy brown groves, 

Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, 

Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipp'd vineyard; 

And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky hard. 

Where thou thyself dost air. 

(The Tempest, iv, i, 64) 

"Pioned, adj., a very doubtful word, variously interpreted as, 
'covered with the marsh marigold,' or simply 'dug.'" 

(Globe ed.) 

"Twilled, adj., a word of which the meaning is unknown. It 
has variously been supposed to signify 'covered with sedge or 
reeds,' or 'ridged,' or 'fringed with matted grass,' or 'smeared 
with mud'!" (Globe ed.) 

A COLD (dispassionate) nymph is spoken of 
as being crowned in the spring. This crown 
is, of course, a wreath. In order to make a 
wreath we must weave together long stems of 
grass or reeds and stick the flowers in the crown 
thus formed. This is especially necessary 
when we are w^orking with brittle stemmed or 
fragile flowers. Shakespeare covers the marge 
of the stream with pionies (formerly spelled so) 
and twills or reeds and sedge with this end in 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I93 

view. As the object is to crown these nymphs, 
he is careful to furnish the raw material. 

Let us take a more comprehensive view of 
what Shakespeare is doing here. He is taking 
account of every sort of soil which the country 
affords. In each case he considers, first, the 
nature of the crop, and, second, what that crop 
is used for. 

He begins with the "rich leas." This is 
meadow land — not soggy or flat undrained 
meadow land but such soil as is necessary to 
the production of the grains. 

Next he considers the "turfy" mountains. 
These produce short grass in patches, and this 
grass serves for the sheep because they can bite 
shorter than any other domestic animal and 
are natural climbers. 

Next he speaks of the "flat meads." A flat 
mead, undrained and low and unsuited for 
other purposes, produces a rank growth of 
grass, usually marsh grass, which lays over in 
one direction like a thatched roof. This 
makes hay which will serve "them to keep" — 
it will support the sheep in winter when they 
cannot crop the mountainsides. The particular 
kind of stover he means is vividly indicated 
by its being "thatched." This is the natural 
product of a flat unmown mead. 

The groves, brown after harvest time, and the 
vineyard, do not need to be described with 
regard to their product, and so with the sterile 
sea-marge which produces nothing. 



. 194 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

He has here taken account of all the kinds 
of land there are, from an agricultural stand- 
point, except one. That is the waste land at 
the steep banks and water-soaked edges of 
streams. As he has, in each preceding instance, 
considered the kind of land, what its products 
are and what the crop is used for, it is reason- 
able to expect that he is going to do the same 
with this. The waste land along the edge of 
the stream, where nature herself has full 
opportunity, produces wild flowers, sedge and 
reeds. These are useful to make wreaths — 
"chaste crowns" for virgin nymphs. 

Therefore, without any etymological assist- 
ance at all, we can see that a "pioned" bank 
is one [^covered with pionies, and a "twilled" 
bank is one woven with reeds and sedge. 

In weaving, a twill or quill or tweel is a small 
hollow reed on which the weaver winds his 
thread. Shakespeare evidently spoke of these 
sedgy and reedy banks as twilled because the 
word is reminiscent of weaving; the reeds are 
to weave crowns for nymphs. 



MY BROTHER GENERAL 

Archbishop. My brother general, the commonwealth, 
To brother born an household cruelty, 
I make my quarrel in particular. 

(2nd Henry IV, iv, i, 95) 

Spedding wrote to the Cambridge editors, 
who were looking for help in the solution of 
this passage, "Conjecture seems hopeless in 
such a case." Clark and Wright accordingly 
said in their notes to the play, "On the whole 
we are of opinion that several lines have been 
omitted, and those which remain displaced, 
and that this is one of the many passages in 
which the true text is irrecoverable." In 
keeping with this view, the Globe edition has 
the first line of this passage signalized with the 
dagger; and other editors seem to regard all 
proposed readings as mere conjecture. 

The passage is open to two possible inter- 
pretations. One is that the Archbishop is 
addressing Westmoreland as the General of 
the king's forces; the other is that the Arch- 
bishop, at the head of his rebels, is referring 
to the commonwealth as his brother in general 
for whom he intends to fight. Most editors 
have taken the former view; but more re- 
cently, Clark's paraphrase, which prefers the 



196 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

latter, is considered, as Gollancz says, "as 
good as any," The difficulty is that when we 
consider the Archbishop using "general" simply 
as the military form of address it is impossible 
to account satisfactorily for the rest of the 
sentence; and as to the other view — that the 
Archbishop is referring to the commonwealth 
as his brother in a general way — no one seems 
to have been able to prove, to the general 
satisfaction of editors, that this is what Shake- 
speare intended. Hence the continual doubt 
and the conclusion that the passage is hopeless. 

There ought to be no doubt of the meaning 
here. The use of antithesis is characteristic 
of Shakespeare: it is a device by which he most 
quickly defines his own meanings and points 
out to us, by various arts in its use, whatever 
he wishes particularly to set forth. In this 
passage we find "brother general" balanced 
off with "brother born"; and as there can be 
no doubt as to the meaning of the latter, so 
there can be no doubt as to the sense of the 
former. Again, the word general calls our 
attention to the word particular. Besides this, 
"brother general" when understood as meaning 
the commonwealth or public weal, stands in 
apposition to "hDusehold" or private weal. 
There is here a triple antithesis showing that 
Shakespeare knew that we would take " general " 
in the miUtary sense, but wished to enforce it 
particularly upon us in the other sense. 

If this is not quite conclusive, there is a 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I97 

question of character-drawing to consider. 
Shakespeare's people must always speak in 
character. The speaker here is an Archbishop. 
He represents that religion of which the very 
basis is brotherhood as founded on the father- 
hood of God. As a Christian, he is not only 
a brother to any man as a man, but, because 
an Archbishop had co-ordinate political power 
in the English government, and held this au- 
thority because he represented Christianity in 
the large, he w^ould properly speak of himself 
from the very Christian standpoint of being a 
brother in general to the commonwealth. This 
point of view would be quite natural and would 
serve to keep his calling before us. 

But a view of the plot itself will unfold to us 
still more plainly the meaning of these words 
and of the passage as a whole. These three 
lines are the Archbishop's answer to a question 
which began sixty-four lines before. It is a 
very biting question. The gist of it is simply 
an inquiry as to why a man of God, who stands 
for the idea of love and peace, should be lead- 
ing rebels to bloody war. The Earl of West- 
moreland speaks for a space of twenty-three 
lines in asking it, piling on the invidious con- 
trast between the Archbishop's proper calling 
and his present one. 

The two men, the Archbishop and the Earl, 
stand facing each other on the field of battle, 
or rather in the rebel camp. Aside from the 
embarrassment of Westmoreland's caustic way 



198 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

of characterizing his present position, the 
Archbishop is in tickhsh straits and he does 
not know exactly how to answer. His chief 
grievance is that the king has ignored him 
and has refused to give him personal audience 
when he wished to present a written protest 
and demand justice against those who had 
killed his brother Scroop. The king has al- 
ways put him off and dealt with him through 
others, and not as if he were a peer of the 
realm; and this is the real grievance that has 
caused the Archbishop to raise forces for the 
rebels. This being the case, it will readily be 
seen that the Archbishop, who still has his 
written complaint and insists upon presenting 
it to the king, is not going to tell his troubles, 
willingly, to this man whom the king has sent. 
Westmoreland is one of those whom the prelate 
is jealous of. 

Another feature of the Archbishop's situa- 
tion is that an important detachment has 
failed to arrive. Northumberland has failed 
to come with his forces and has sent excuses 
instead; and this makes it look dubious for 
the rebel cause. Besides this, the churchman 
is essentially a diplomat, anyway, even in his 
making cause with the rebels; he hoped thus 
to get the church properly recognized by the 
king by this bold show of force. He did not 
go to war so much as a soldier as a shrewd 
schemer, and with this sudden turn of affairs, 
in which the much-expected Northumberland 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE I99 

seems to have more discretion than valor, the 
Archbishop sees himself in a precarious posi- 
tion. There he is at the head of a lot of rebels, 
and the king demands an accounting. His 
situation is full of risk; and possibly he may, 
after all, get what he wants if he does not seem 
to weaken and at the same time gives a molli- 
fying reply. 

His answer is a masterpiece in the art of 
saying nothing; or, at most, of saying some- 
thing in such an ingenious and evasive way 
that it amounts to nothing definite. All he 
makes plain is that he insists upon being re- 
ceived and listened to by the king himself. 

The Archbishop's reply, of thirty-five lines, 
is an interesting study in Shakespearean art. 
He really has nothing to say to Westmoreland, 
but he starts in promptly as if he had. It is 
a case of saying nothing and having to think 
it up as you say it. He begins with large 
abstract views of human nature. He has a 
theological abstraction all ready and he feels 
his way along with great polemical ability. He 
gains time, while he is thinking, by making a 
side allusion to the way of King Richard's 
death, also vaguely and theologically con- 
sidered; then he gets into other all-inclusive 
abstractions which approach a little nearer to 
his obscure grievance. Suddenly he decides 
that it is time to seem more pointed and defi- 
nite; and so, as if all this had been a carefully 
weighed and profound introduction, he says, 



200 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

"Hear me more plainly." The inference is 
that he has already said it with scholarly 
depth. After this announcement of becoming 
more plain, he goes on in a way no less rumina- 
tive and abstract except that he does let it out 
that the king has not given him a proper hear- 
ing regarding certain things he has written 
down, as he says — but the nature of which he 
does not mention. 

The Archbishop's whole course of procedure 
had been essentially politic from the first. The 
king was not according the church the in- 
fluence it had been used to as a co-ordinate 
branch of the government; the Archbishop 
was being superseded in power by other noble- 
men; and this was brought to an issue through 
the churchman's attempts to get a hearing 
regarding the case of his brother. Now that 
things had miscarried in war and come to 
a most ticklish pass, the Archbishop had to 
temporize in talk and gently feel his way. 
He could hardly reply that the king him- 
self was the cause of his grievance, and he 
did not wish to go too far in antagonizing 
Westmoreland. What sort of reply could he 
make? He had to be careful. Hence his 
assuming so fully the tone of a Christian and a 
wise and really peaceful prelate. 

Some critics have regarded this long rambling 
reply as a key to the Archbishop's character — 
weak, vague-minded and verbose. This is a 
mistaken view. Such things must be looked 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 201 

at in the light of circumstances. To not say 
anything, and yet not to insult Westmoreland 
by refusing to talk to him; to keep up his 
character as a reverend, beneficent churchman 
and yet make it seem consistent with his present 
bloody calling; to seem not to weaken and yet 
hold the way open for a possible reconcihation 
with the king — all this was a difficult thing to 
do. Altogether the Archbishop did very well. 
It behooved him to take a shrewd tack in view 
of the non-arrival of Northumberland's forces. 

The reply, however, does not mollify West- 
moreland. He summarily and flatly denies 
that the Archbishop has been slighted in any 
way and that the other noblemen have come 
between him and the king. Westmoreland's 
answer is short and forceful. 

The Archbishop sees that he has got to seem 
more definite and at the same time put a better 
face on his present dubious position. Here he 
brings forth his final artistic answer to the 
question begun so long before. 

My brother general, the commonwealth, 
To brother born an household cruelty, 
I make my quarrel in particular. 

His referring to the commonwealth as his 
brother keeps up his beneficent Christian 
character. His statement that his brother in 
general has been cruel to his brother born, and 
his wording this as an "household" cruelty, is 
a most powerful and skilful turning of the 
issue in a direction which would excuse him in 



202 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

his dangerous course. It is the "common- 
wealth" (not the king) that has done him 
wrong and needs chastisement; and he, the 
Archbishop, is righting an ''household" (not a 
political) grievance. That is, it is the kilhng 
of his brother, a thing which struck him in his 
household, his very home, which has caused 
the Archbishop to take this armed action for 
justice. This is wonderfully well done. He 
could not recede from his real political motives 
in a shrewder way; it is entirely calculated to 
put his whole revolt in an excusable light and 
propitiate the king. 

In reading such passages we have to stop 
and remind ourselves that they are not history, 
not the actual words and scenes from the lives 
of men, but purely Shakespeare's invention. 
There is a touch of humor in the plight to 
which the Archbishop is brought in making 
"the commonwealth" his quarrel "in particu- 
lar." But the venerable prelate had to make 
some show of getting down to the final par- 
ticulars. 

The passage as a whole is very simple in 
structure, as can be seen by leaving out the 
parenthetical middle line. It may be regarded 
as abstract in its nature; but it is none the less 
simple as a sentence and definite in meaning. 

The punctuation of the Globe edition is as 

My brother general, the commonwealth, 
To brother born an household cruelty, 
I make my quarrel in particular. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 203 

Neilson (1906) in his Cambridge edition, has 
it differently. Note the period. 

My brother general, the commonwealth, 

To brother born an household cruelty. 
I make my quarrel in particular. 

A comparison of these two modern texts will 
give the reader an idea of the confusion that 
still invests the passage after so many genera- 
tions of criticism. Knight tried to make sense 
of it by dint of exclamation marks. 

How Clark and Wright could think that any 
lines had been "lost" I cannot imagine. There 
is nothing fragmentary about these well-con- 
nected lines. If Shakespeare had it at all 
different in acting, the change consisted merely 
in cutting out the parenthetic line, as its ab- 
sence in the Folio would indicate. 



THE MYSTERY OF HAMLET 

There is not so much "inconsistency" in 
the conduct of Hamlet as is generally supposed. 
To show this I shall take a number of the most 
contradictory-seeming passages and explain 
them according to the one central idea. The 
character and conduct of Hamlet is utterly 
natural. That is where the greatness lies. 

Up to the meeting between Hamlet and the 
ghost, there is nothing in his character which 
strikes us as unnatural; but after that strange 
"inconsistencies" arise to puzzle the com- 
mentators. All these are easily explainable. 
We cannot, however, make the least progress in 
the understanding of the true inwardness of 
the play until we have realized that Hamlet is 
a man who has been incapacitated to have 
emotion. 

This gives rise to a peculiar state of affairs. 
To witness a display of emotion upon the part 
of others was a torture to him because it re- 
minded him of the. faculty which he had lost. 
It made him feel poignantly the difference 
between himself and other men, a terrible state 
of isolation; and not only that, it confronted 
him continually with a live contrast between 
his former self and the man he had now become. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 205 

Emotion is our source of inward relief. A 
man who cannot have it does not want to be 
always faced by those who can; it calls up an 
inward lack which is nothing less than painful. 
Hence Hamlet's feehng that the world was 
"mocking" or "outfacing" him. It is here, 
in this inward state of affairs, that the whole 
tragedy lies. 

Let us begin our insight of this by taking 
up those impassioned hues regarding Hecuba — 
the scene between Hamlet and the traveling 
actors (ii, 2, 576). Shakespeare has here in- 
troduced, for the particular purpose in view, 
the most vivid and high-wrought eloquence of 
primitive tragedy. It is intended to rouse the 
blood. Immediately the players are gone a 
soHloquy begins: 

Hamlet. Ay, so. God buy ye. — Now I am alone. 

A while Hamlet berates himself for not hav- 
ing a feeling over his own real tragedy like that 
the actors are able to work up over a mere 
fancied one. Then note what follows, remem- 
bering always that Hamlet is alo7ie. He breaks 
out — 

Am I a coward? 
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across. 
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face, 
Tweaks me by the nose, gives my the lie i' the throat 
As deep as to the lungs, who does me this? 
Ha! 

This means that Hamlet is trying to work up 
some sort of emotion in himself. In order to 



206 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

do SO he imagines some insulting adversary, 
and he heaps upon himself the most unbrook- 
able indignities that one man could perpetrate 
upon another. They would move the ire of a 
slave. Hamlet, by a strong effort of imagina- 
tion, conceives such an adversary before him; 
and all because, being unpregnant of emotion, 
he hopes to stir up within himself the begin- 
nings of a live passion. It is like priming a 
dry pump. By this artificial means he hopes 
to strike the live springs of emotion and set 
his human nature a-working; but it is no use. 
For after that tragic "Ha" (as if he were on 
the point of drawing his sword) it all comes to 
nothing; and he reflects — 

Swounds, I should take it; for it cannot be 
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall 
To make oppression bitter, — 

But Hamlet does not give up so easily. 
From this attempt to rouse his feelings with an 
imaginary opponent he now turns his mind to 
his real enemy, the king. He makes a grand 
effort at passionate feeling, as can be seen by 
the tirade of epithet he launches himself into. 

Bloody, bawdy villain! 
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villianl 
O, vengeance! 
Why, what an ass am I! 

The effort fails — it is mere words. The 
epithets strike Hamlet as vain and ridiculous 
because they do not lead on to action; which 
is to say, they have not moving passion behind 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 20/ 

them. Hamlet is a man who, as I have said, 
has been incapacitated to have emotion. 

We must remember, in reading this outburst, 
that it is not genuine; it is a mere experimental 
attempt. Shakespeare has artfully paved the 
way for this interpretation by preceding it with 
the effort at feeling against an imaginary 
opponent. That was a mere trumped-up emo- 
tion; and so is this. Shakespeare is very 
organic in his sequences. 

We have now considered a very large unit 
in the organism of the play as a whole; and the 
principal idea in this unit, which includes the 
player's lengthy speech and Hamlet's experi- 
ments afterward, is to enforce upon us deeply 
the idea of Hamlet's incapacity to have emo- 
tion — a faculty which he had lost. We see 
that he feels the lack poignantly; the very inner 
hollowness is a pain. It was done very sys- 
tematically; first by a strong contrast between 
the mere actor who could have "tears in 's 
eyes" over nothing but the live working of his 
own sources of emotion, and the incapacity of 
Hamlet to get such relief even when he re- 
quired it in actual life. And the complete 
artificiality of his tirade against the king is 
enforced upon us by preceding it with an 
effort which is unmistakably, ostensibly, arti- 
ficial. Shakespeare works in large units which 
are organic in every small detail, and which 
in turn make up an organic whole. We can- 
not read him to the best advantage unless we 



208 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

have an eye for the central ideas which these 
larger units or divisions are primarily engaged 
upon. The richness of the poetry, and the 
multipHcity of side-lights which are struck out, 
must not bhnd us to the masterly progress, the 
larger main trend. 

But Shakespeare could do more than one 
thing at a time; these actors are going ulti- 
mately to be used for the shrewd detection 
of the king's guilty conscience. I must point 
out, however, in order that the reader may not 
get issues confused, that this purpose has 
hardly been hinted at. So far the actors serve 
purely for the effect we have been observing; 
but suddenly, when Hamlet's efforts at feeling 
have proved vain, he says, "Fob! about my 
brains," and then the action takes a new turn. 
Their further purpose is revealed to us. For 
as Hamlet lives in the cold light of reason, 
bereft of all other rehef, he is quite at home in 
a deep, canny piece of detective work. 

Let us now turn to another very inconsist- 
ent-seeming passage and note the same mean- 
ing behind it. I refer to the passage containing 
that beautiful description, "this majestical 
roof fretted with golden fire" (ii, 2, 310). 
Hamlet says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 
"I have of late — but wherefore I know not — 
lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exer- 
cise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my 
disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, 
seems to me a sterile promontory; this most 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 209 

excellent canopy, the air, look you, — this 
brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical 
roof fretted with golden fire — why, it appears 
no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent 
congregation of vapours." 

How, the reader must ask, could Hamlet 
spontaneously produce so surpassing a de- 
scription — one, indeed, which moves our own 
feehngs in its beautiful and joyous conception 
of the universe — if, as he says, he has not the 
least feehng for it? If he does not see it that 
way, but is filled only with the vision of a 
"sterile promontory" and a "foul and pesti- 
lent congregation of vapours," what could 
prompt him to such sufficing eulogy? Is this 
true to human nature? Hamlet has here con- 
tradicted himself twice. 

But note what follows : 

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How 
infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and ad- 
mirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like 
a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! 
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights 
not me, — no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you 
seem to say so. 

Again we must ask the same question. How 
could any man be prompted to such full expres- 
sion of admiration if, as a matter of fact, he 
did not feel the delight he expresses? 

Shakespeare is here enforcing upon us again 
the fact that Hamlet had lost his capacity for 
emotion. I say lost, because he formerly had 
it. He is here speaking out of his former self — 



2IO SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

the remembrance of what the world once was 
to him. He is doing his best, in all these words, 
to stir up some vestige of his too-well-remem- 
bered aesthetic pleasure in the universe; but 
it is no use. This is the most tragic phase of 
his situation in life — to be a dead self. His 
intellectual faculties are unimpaired; he sees 
how these things might be enthusiastically 
viewed because it is out of his own former 
experience; but the saying of it does not move 
him. His emotions are but a memory. We 
thus see that this speech is quite true to nature, 
utterly consistent. 

Before we proceed to a further example, the 
reader will probably be interested to observe 
that in this instance, as in the one we have just 
been considering, Shakespeare has paved the 
way to the point of view. Wishing the mind 
to follow a certain course he takes hold of it 
at once and creates the point of view before- 
hand, as it were, in a short unmistakable form. 
Having forced the mind to take that attitude, 
he now leads it through a slightly longer course 
of the same point of view. And now, having 
got us going in the direction he desires, so that 
we not only read but understand while we read, 
he launches into the full rich expression which 
is necessary to attain life and vigor. That is 
to say, Hamlet at first expresses his contra- 
dictory state of mind very briefly — "this 
goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile 
promontory." This we seize at once. He 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 211 

then goes through this point of view in just a 
little longer form: — "this most excellent can- 
opy, the air, look you — this brave o'erhang- 
ing firmament, this majestical roof fretted with 
golden fire — why, it appears no other thing 
to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of 
vapours." Now we are following him; and he 
lets loose that replete and ascending passage 
on the beauty of man, which finally ends the 
same; and we catch the point of view with the 
rapidity and ease so necessary to the drama. 
It is the rapidity of anticipation. This is a 
point in the technique of writing which few 
writers understand. But all great writing 
should have this devised ease, whether it be 
drama or not. 

The "psychology" of Shakespeare is usually 
conceived merely as an examination of his 
characters to determine whether they are true 
to life or not. But there is a psychology of 
writing; and this is where Shakespeare is deepest 
of all. He not only understood human nature in 
his characters but in us as an audience to be 
affected — the art of construction. To be- 
tray us into emotional climaxes, we must 
first be led along and prepared by certain 
insights, and the way to these must be paved 
infalUbly with a sequence of intellectual steps; 
and this is plot-making in its deeper and more 
difficult sense. It is construction, an art of 
which Shakespeare was the greatest master. 
The "plot" of a story is an easy thing as com- 



212 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

pared with its handling, for this latter is the 
plot against us; and Shakespeare, wherever he 
got the raw materials for his stories, was the 
greatest plotmaker who ever lived. He makes 
us take steps which we are scarcely aware of, 
and an infallible psychology permeates the 
finest details of his writing. The one end in 
view advances, not merely through construc- 
tion in its larger phases, but in the finest 
details of the work. The psychology of the 
audience, or of the writing art, is the deepest 
of all; and this phase of his profundity has not 
been very successfully dealt with. Most of his 
commentators do not seem even to be aware 
of it. 

Continuing now the line of thought with 
which we started out, let us consider the scene 
at Ophelia's grave. Here, it would seem, is 
inconsistency in double ply. We may regard 
it as contradictory in two regards. 

First: Does Hamlet love Ophelia.'* If he 
does not, why this display of towering passion 
at her grave? He declares that he loved her 
more than "forty thousand brothers." If, then, 
his love for her has continued all this while, so 
that he now feels it with such overwhelming 
passion, what are we to think of his preceding 
course of conduct toward her.^ In the third 
act he evidently fell completely out of love 
with her; and having thrown her over he has 
not given her the least thought since. There 
he consigned her with the coldest deliberation 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 213 

to a "nunnery" — and that so that she shall 
not become a breeder of sinners. We are there 
shown at considerable length that he has come 
to regard her merely in the light of all women, 
whom he has perceived to be vain, trifling and 
ungenuine. He rates her with the general run 
of womankind, so that she is no more than any 
other of her sex to him. And when we realize 
that she was wholly unfitted to sympathize 
with him, and that she handed back his pres- 
ents for no reason of her own and even con- 
sented to act as a stool-pigeon for those who 
were spying upon him, we can readily under- 
stand how Hamlet would feel that he had over- 
rated her. No man could make it more 
apparent than Hamlet does, that he has 
completely lost his delusions over a woman. 
How then are we to harmonize this with the 
theory that at her graveside he still loves her? 
This has been a difficult point for critics to 
handle. 

The theory generally accepted is that Ham- 
let's "bitterness" to Ophelia is not genuine. 
He sees that their ways in life must part; he 
therefore parts with her very harshly as being 
the most merciful course of procedure. As 
their love must come to an end, he takes steps 
to put her out of love with him. This theory 
might be all very well were it not for what 
follows in their relations thereafter. They 
mingle freely together; Hamlet does not avoid 
her but deliberately chooses to lie with his 



214 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

head in her lap at the play; and then ensues 
what is known as a part of "Hamlet's cruelty 
to Ophelia." He trifles with her, even flaunts 
her; he leads her shrewdly, and to his evident 
amusement, into a recognition of lecherous 
allusions which make a mockery of her studied 
conception of modesty. If any man ever 
showed that he considered a woman a mere 
shallow pretense it is here. Having thrown 
her over, he now shows every evidence that he 
takes her with the utmost lightness. All this 
goes farther than there could be any reason 
for if his intentions toward her are so very 
beneficent. It is a critical theory without 
one word of Shakespeare's to support it; and 
all to harmonize his actions with the theory 
that he continued to love her and expressed 
that love at her grave. In the meantime she 
has been dropped so completely out of his life 
that he has not even thought of her. He has 
killed her father without so much as a word 
regarding its eff'ect upon her; and this is less 
care than he bestowed on Laertes, with whose 
grief he sympathized. After that trifling and 
mocking bout between them at the court 
play, Ophelia seems to drop entirely out of his 
thoughts; and suddenly we are called upon to 
believe, in the scene at the grave, that he still 
loves her! In this case we could wish that 
Shakespeare himself had thrown a little light 
on so important a point. It is not his way to 
be so over-subtle — carrying a point to such an 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 21 5 

extreme point of neglect that it is no point at 
all. As will be seen, much depends upon our 
interpretation of his conduct at her grave; for 
all this inconsistency arises out of the critical 
theory that he is here affected by his love of her. 
But there is another inconsistency in his con- 
duct which strikes a reader even more strangely. 
Why this sudden change of front toward Laer- 
tes? Hamlet has not had any bitterness of 
feeling toward Ophelia's brother, but rather the 
opposite. When he first sees him in this scene 
he speaks of him as "a very noble youth." 
And as we see later in the play, Hamlet is so 
far from having any hard feelings toward Laer- 
tes that he feels actual sympathy for him over 
the loss of his father. Shakespeare, in order to 
make this state of affairs plain to us, is at pains 
to have Hamlet explain the basis of his kindly 
feeling toward Laertes — " For by the image of 
my cause I see the portraiture of his." That 
is to say, Hamlet, having lost a father whom he 
loved, can appreciate Laertes' feeling over the 
loss of his own father, whom Hamlet inadver- 
tently killed. Hamlet is therefore willing to 
go to almost any extreme of apology toward 
Laertes; he does not blame him for feeling bitter 
but tries to make his own irresponsibility under- 
stood. He has so much respect and kindliness 
of feeling toward Laertes that he prizes his good 
opinion and is willing to make any sort of al- 
lowance for Laertes' bitterness toward him. 
Now in this scene at the grave, Hamlet's feel- 



2l6 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

ings are the same; his first thought upon seeing 
Laertes is that he is "a very noble youth," — a 
comment that is certainly spoken in a mood 
of commendation. 

But note what suddenly takes place. While 
Hamlet and Horatio are lying hidden among 
the tombstones, their presence being quite un- 
known to the people at the grave, Laertes is 
very naturally overcome with grief as they 
prepare to throw the dirt upon his sister, and 
he expresses this grief feelingly. Immediately 
Hamlet leaps from his hiding place, jumps into 
the grave and accuses Laertes of doing all this 
simply to "outface" him. Whereas it is made 
plain that Laertes could not have known that 
Hamlet was anywhere about! Hamlet's mood 
is not one of sorrow or of love for Ophelia, but 
purely of rage at Laertes who would thus "out- 
face" him, and of disdain for Laertes' expres- 
sions of grief! 

True, Laertes had called down curses upon 
the head of him who was responsible for the 
death of his sister; and this certainly had its 
effect upon Hamlet. But this does not make 
the inconsistency any the less. Laertes was 
simply indulging in natural emotion over the 
loss of his sister. , Therefore how are we to 
account for the strange mood in which Hamlet 
took this — his inconsistent-seeming point of 
view.f* Even the theory that Hamlet still loved 
Ophelia does not make it clear and plain. If 
anything, it would make Hamlet sympathetic 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 217 

with Laertes' grief; for by the image of his own 
cause he could portray the other. But Hamlet 
does not take it in that spirit; he is personally 
affronted. To say that Hamlet was insane 
would be an easy way of straightening out 
many things; but this theory has been cast 
aside by critics of any insight or standing. 
Shakespeare has taken too much pains to show 
that Hamlet is not insane; the theory is unten- 
able. Insane men do not make good drama 
because their motives are so inconsistent and 
senseless that their actions cannot hold our 
interest in the plot. It therefore remains to 
account for this scene upon Shakespearean 
grounds. 

It is all very easy to understand providing we 
have gathered what Shakespeare has set before 
us in the preceding acts. He has shown us the 
same thing in less complicated situations; and 
if we have caught it in the simpler expositions 
we will easily enough recognize the central idea 
in this place, where Hamlet finds himself 
worked upon by more complex influences. 
Note the high-sounding and really ridiculous 
feats which Hamlet proposes the moment the 
two have been dragged from each other's grasp. 
Here is the same melodramatic "Swounds" 
which we saw in a preceding case of the same 
nature. 

'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do. 

Woo't weep? Woo't fight? Woo't fast? Woo't tear thyself? 

Woo't drink up eisel? Eat a crocodile? 



21 8 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine? 
To outface me with leaping in her grave? 
Be buried quick with her and so will I; 
And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw 
Millions of acres on us till our ground 
Singeing his pate against the burning zone, 
Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an' thou'lt mouth 
I'll rant as well as thou. 

In the concluding lines, as in preceding in- 
stances, we see his recognition of the fact that 
what he is saying is mere words. Hamlet is a 
man who has lost his capacity to have emotion. 
With the whole tragedy of his life facing him 
in the persons of the king, the queen, and 
Ophelia, and the spectacle of the relief that 
they find in tears and wordy tributes, he is 
driven to do something to find surcease from 
the pent-up pain around his own blighted 
heart. He does his best so far as words and 
activity go; but that is all it is. He starts 
out with challenges that are reasonably natural 
if artificial — "Woo't weep? Woo't fight?" 
He increases the force of his propositions, as if 
he felt their ineffectiveness, until finally it be- 
comes ridiculous; and suddenly he sees that it 
is hollow-hearted rant. "Woo't drink up eisel? 
Eat a crocodile?^' 

The psychology of his strange conduct is as 
follows. Hamlet's heart, early in the play, had 
been completely broken. He had terrible in- 
sights of the world as it is; and the shock of 
this, upon so noble a nature as Hamlet's, had 
caused the very bottom to drop out of his 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 219 

soul. Through the experience of hard facts^ 
not morbid imaginings, he had lost his faith in 
womankind, his pride in his family and himself, 
his whole set of high ideals regarding the world. 
He had lost all his youthful delusions — his 
ability to fall in love, his ambitious aspiring to 
worldly honor, even that moving passion for 
wild justice, revenge; and in its place was a 
terrible deep insight of the hypocrisy, the un- 
certainty, the self-delusions and unfealty of 
mankind. Tragedy had struck him in the only 
place it can strike a man utterly — at home. 
One moment he was an aspiring youth with 
the highest ideals and the most charitable ex- 
cuses for mankind; the next moment he was 
hit a blow on the very heart and he found him- 
self viewing the wreck of a world. In his head 
was the clear penetrating light of hard fact, 
the insight of things as they are; and in his 
heart a dull unbearable pain. He was driven 
to the point where he would rather be out of 
the world than in it; for life was a mocking pain. 
In tears there is no cure for such a pain. The 
soft emotion of tears will not erase it; sighs 
will not blow it away. For this is to be a dead 
self. In the death of a friend we see the 
mysterious work of nature and in the mystery 
there is hope. Tears are its cure. Emotion 
repays itself for the loss and we cease to weep. 
We feel that all is well and go on our way en- 
riched in the treasures of our heart. But when 
a man mourns for what he knozvs, there is no 



220 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

remedy, no relief. For what a man knows in 
his heart he cannot forget. To have such 
knowledge as Hamlet had, and in the way he 
had it, is to pursue a living death. The pain 
is numb, hollow and dumb; and when we see 
others taking the benefit of human emotion it 
rises and gripes us. Is it any wonder, then, 
that when Hamlet saw Laertes revelling in a 
very luxury of grief over a dead sister, and thus 
finding relief from a pain not half so deadly as 
his own, he should feel that the world and the 
very scheme of things had there conspired to 
pain and mock him. And that it should all 
seem a travesty as compared with his own 
case? For him there was no such relief — for 
he could not feel the emotion. Once we take 
this view, which is in harmony with the whole 
drift of the play, Hamlet's words become sin- 
gularly luminous and consistent. 

Dost thou come here to whine? 
To outface me with leaping in her grave? 

"To outface me" — If we have understood 
what Hamlet meant and felt when, after the 
interview with the Captain of Fortinbras' 
troops, he says, "How all occasions do inform 
against me," we shall hardly need an explana- 
tion here. Hamlet was outfaced by Fortinbras' 
youthful activity because it made a mockery of 
his own lack of motive-power; he was outfaced 
by the passion of the traveling player because 
it reminded him of his own inability to have 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 221 

such feelings; he was outfaced when Rosen- 
crantz and Guildenstern tried to find out his 
true state of mind because it recalled his more 
youthful feelings toward the world and reminded 
him that he had even lost the power of admira- 
tion. And here at the grave we see the most 
painful outfacing of all. It is all of a piece, 
and we must understand this scene in the sense 
that Shakespeare has led up to and prepared 
us for. These people had not outfaced him 
purposely; they were the unconscious instru- 
ments in the hands of fate. In like manner 
Laertes, not knowing he was about, outfaced 
him with the power of consoling grief. The 
whole world outfaced Hamlet because his in- 
sights had placed him in a terrible isolation; 
he was a man apart from the race. Nothing 
could be calculated to bring it home to him 
with more terrible power than this scene at the 
grave. 

Hamlet did not feel any genuine anger against 
Laertes. There is no more rancor than he felt 
toward Horatio when he said to him, "Do not 
mock me, fellow student." Why then this 
indignation, this mood of rage.^ The conjunc- 
tion of affairs at the grave was such as to ag- 
gravate his soul into a nameless agony, an 
unbearable pain which seemed all the more 
gratuitous because he had done nothing to merit 
it. He was being tortured and mocked beyond 
all reason; and when a man is being pained he 
naturally takes action against the agent of his 



222 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

torture. His indignation is against the state 
of affairs, and his protest takes the form of 
anger because it could take no other. Hamlet 
does not even offer combat when the enraged 
Laertes grasps him by the throat; he says 
rather: 

I prithee, take thy fingers from jny throat, 
For, though I am not splenetive and rash. 
Yet have I in me something dangerous, 
Which let thy wiseness fear. Away thy hand. 

The "something" is desperation, not anger. 
There is here something of the benign attitude 
of Romeo toward Paris when he was himself on 
the point of suicide, "Good, gentle youth, tempt 
not a desperate man." All this is very natural 
and consistent. Hamlet is stung to despera- 
tion, and he regards Laertes' high-sounding 
sorrow as a mere travesty in the light of his own 
deeper pain; but yet he has no personal feeling 
against him. 

It is a theory which persists from one genera- 
tion to another that Hamlet has continued to 
love Ophelia and that he is affected by his 
present love for her at the grave. In this case 
we could wish not only that Shakespeare had 
referred to such a state of affairs during all the 
interim, but that he would give some hint of it 
here. Hamlet does not love Ophelia. Instead 
of any indication of sorrow or assuaging tears, 
what have we.? We have sorrow referred to 
in the mere form of a challenge. Hamlet ban- 
ters Laertes to compete with him in various 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 223 

deeds — "Woo't weep? Woo't fight?" Tears, 
in Hamlet's mind, are put on such an artificial 
basis of effort that they are rated in with fight- 
ing, with drinking up vinegar and eating a 
crocodile. Usually, when people feel sorrow, 
they do not regard tears as a difficult deed to be 
essayed in manly competition; they shed the 
tears. Laertes' exhibition of luxurious emotion 
had "outfaced" Hamlet; the world had again 
mocked him and touched him to the quick. If 
Hamlet could have wept he would — even as 
he would have drunk the vinegar or eaten the 
crocodile if it could have given his heart relief. 
He says "I loved Ophelia." True enough, he 
did — before he found out that she was not his 
ideal. He had lost her long before; and we do 
not mourn twice for the dead. It is merely 
''the fair Opheha" that is being buried here. 

It must be remembered that not the least 
source of Hamlet's inner pain was memory, 
the recollection of what he had formerly been. 
More than by his father's ghost, Hamlet was 
haunted by his dead self. Such an occasion 
as this, besides outfacing him in the present, 
was calculated to work on him in that way. 
He had loved Ophelia, a most poignant memory. 
As to his incapacity for emotion, we do not 
refer, of course, to passing elations of mere in- 
tellectual triumph, as when he worms out the 
secret of the king's guilt — if that may be called 
emotion. It was the breaking down of all the 
vital relations of life, beginning with his mother, 



224 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

that made Hamlet's life a tragedy. Which- 
ever way he turned he was faced by a mother 
guilty of incest and easy in her love; an uncle 
who was a murderer and a hypocrite; a love 
that proved a disappointment; a court that 
was shallow and merely political. And he 
was incapacitated to have emotion in the face 
of the facts. 

He was a man not only of the profoundest 
intellect but of the richest and finest nature. 
If these things had not happened there would 
not have been the inward tragedy. If Ophelia 
had turned out to meet his essential ideals of a 
woman (apart from any abihty of hers to take 
part in his stern business in Hfe) his tragedy 
would not have been unmitigated. But Shake- 
speare has taken pains to make it utter and com- 
plete; it is most systematically complete. 
Therefore, to regard Hamlet as still loving 
Ophelia, or in any way cherishing the ideal, is 
to work at cross-purposes to the whole intent 
of the play. "The fair Ophelia" — this is his 
casual comment to Horatio upon his first learn- 
ing who it is that is being buried. 

True, Laertes' emotion is not of the deepest. 
It is his nature to love display, to be melodra- 
matic. Various critics have noted this with 
excellent discrimination. What are we then to 
conclude .? — That Hamlet felt real emotion, 
true sorrow over her death; and that he jumped 
into the grave out of mere disdain and resent- 
ment of Laertes' exaggerated expression of 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 225 

love ? Are we to infer that this is a sort of aes- 
thetic protest over a matter of bad taste? 
Current interpretations of the incident would 
leave us in just that state of mind. But this 
is not the point. Hamlet acted out of pure 
pain. This is the whole point of the tragedy. 
It was a pain that always haunted him, but 
which arose under conditions to a poignancy 
that was unbearable. There is in his life neither 
self-pity nor a cherishing of grief, but simple 
torture. It is a tragedy not of blood but of 
pain. In it death and blood are of the slightest 
significance. If we may attribute to it any 
moral as a whole it is that very frequently in 
this world it is the best that suffer the most. 

The reader will now ask — and it is a fair 
question — if Hamlet has been incapacitated 
to have emotion, how is it that he weeps after 
the interview with his mother and the killing 
of Polonius.f' She certainly reports that he 
wept; and we have no reason to doubt it, for 
he probably did; and most feelingly. Although 
I have not space in the midst of these cruxes to 
write an extended analysis of Hamlet, I can 
hardly leave this point unexplained and incom- 
plete. 

Shakespeare shows us this incapacity pro- 
gressively, as a growth or piling up of the 
tragedy, going from the slighter manifestations 
to the stronger. To show this to the complete 
satisfaction of the reader let me call his atten- 
tion to just one more instance, after which we 



226 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

shall be in a position to understand Shake- 
speare's method. 

The transformation in Hamlet's nature be- 
gins with the ghost's revelation at the end of 
the first act. Immediately afterward we see 
him talking to the soldiers. By his strange 
words he feels that he has offended them; and 
he says — 

I am sorry that they offend you, heartily; 
Yes, faith, heartily. 

Note how careful Shakespeare is to put a 
complete lack of heart in those words; and also 
to show this so immediately after the disillu- 
sioning experience. A man who felt no lack of 
feeling in his words would be satisfied with 
saying simply "I am sorry they off'end you." 
But Hamlet adds, because he feels this lack, 
"heartily." But despite this effort to have full 
feeling, he feels an inward lack; and so he tries 
it again: "Yes, faith, heartily." This is the 
same thing we have been noting; it is no use 
for Hamlet really to try to feel these things 
which it seems he ought to say and do. 

Now there is no doubt that at this stage of 
his tragic experiences he would be able to feel 
deeply or even weep over the inconstancy of 
Ophelia — in fact we do find that he comes to 
her later in a great state of distraction and di- 
shevelment as a result of her unwarranted and 
unceremonious "repelling" of his letters to her. 
But at this particular stage, immediately after 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 22/ 

the ghost scene, his revelation has been that 
of the hypocrisy of men, and this poisons his 
mingling with his fellows. 

It is quite probable that Hamlet wept or 
was at least overcome with emotion when 
Ophelia first showed herself inconstant and un- 
worthy. But by the time we see him consign- 
ing her to a "nunnery" so bitterly, this is all 
over. He has learned another lesson; and we 
do not weep for the dead more than once. 
Hence his genuinely unfeeling harshness to- 
ward her; there has been a revulsion in his 
sentiments toward women. But yet his mother 
is left — the one great relation in the world to 
him. This comes next in order. And natu- 
rally when he sees there is nothing in this rela- 
tion, for she is a difficult case, and when the 
accidental killing is piled on top of it, he weeps. 
But never again will he weep over a killing or 
over a mother. He has gone through that to 
the uttermost depths of his soul; and only 
another vacancy is left. From which it will be 
seen that when I say he was "incapacitated to 
have emotion," I am referring to what Shake- 
speare represented, namely, that in any particu- 
lar case, as it is brought forward and presented, 
he is incapacitated to have that particular 
emotion again. 

Now, instead of looking at the order of the 
events themselves, which as we have seen are 
progressive and growing in power; let us look 
at the order of the particular passages in which 



228 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare expresses or shows it to us. It is 
in the passages that he makes it tacit. 

First we see Hamlet, in a mere sHght sentence, 
struggHng with a lack of feeling in a little mat- 
ter of politeness — his relation to his fellow 
men; next we see this struggle when his dark 
outlook has spoiled the world in general for 
him — it comes out in an aesthetic sort of con- 
nection with the traveling players; next it has 
risen in power and we see that he has lost 
such vital interest in human affairs themselves 
that he cannot react to the feeling of revenge 
against the king even when he imagines direct 
unmanly insult to spur himself on. Finall}^ 
at the grave scene, the climax, he has gone 
through it all and he can feel no emotion at all. 
He makes a terrible effort to be a man among 
men, to feel the soft sorrow that he feels a hu- 
man being should experience; but it is no use, 
his great effort, an extreme writhing under the 
pain of his condition, is a mere abortion of grief. 
He has run the gamut; he had sorrowed for 
Ophelia before. And we weep for the dead but 
once. 

This solves the whole question of Ophelia, 
the seeming inconsistency of which is so much 
at the bottom of the "mystery" of Hamlet. 
So long as critics persist in looking at Ophelia 
"in the round," seeing her charming points, 
reasoning that Hamlet loved her to the time 
of her death and using this as an explana- 
tion of the strange grave scene, they will 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 229 

never solve the "mystery" of Hamlet in the 
world. 

It will not do to follow the modern method 
of looking at the characters "in the round." 
If you want to understand Hamlet you have 
got to look at things from Hamlet's standpoint. 
And this, not in the hght of a -priori theory but 
of the facts themselves just as Shakespeare 
presents them. In every case Shakespeare 
will explain himself utterly, in every scene and 
passage, to entire consistency; it is only neces- 
sary for us to furnish the sympathetic insight 
and feeling. Hamlet is not a mystery. To 
say that it must be so, for all time, because 
"life is a mystery" is entirely beside the point. 
The same might be said of some other play just 
as well, so long as it represents life. Anyone 
can write a play which is a mystery, inscrutable 
and inconsistent; but great men do not write 
mysteries. They elucidate. And while I have 
not space, while engaged upon cruxes, to go 
fully into Hamlet, I believe that to anyone who 
has a real desire to understand the play I have 
here furnished the most valuable first step. 



DEATH'S HERITAGE 

Death is my Sonne in law, death .is my Heire, 
My Daughter he hath wedded. I will die 
And leave him all life living, all is death's. 

(First Folio) 

Death is my son-in-law. Death is my heir; 
My daughter he hath wedded; I will die, 
And leave him all; life, living, all is Death's. 

(Romeo and Juliet, iv, 5, 37, Modern Editions) 

As will be observed, the first collected edition 
of Shakespeare's works (1623) has the grief- 
stricken Capulet say that, as Death is his heir 
in taking his daughter Juliet, he will now die 
along with her and leave Death "all life living." 

In the standard text of today, he first says 
he will leave death "all" and then goes on to 
specify what that all consists of, namely — life, 
living. Looking at this latter in the effort to 
find out what it means, we find ourselves feeling 
about for the distinction intended between 
those similar words, life, living. As we have to 
understand the distinction, the best we can 
make of it, according to all proper word usage, 
is that "life" means his physical life or exist- 
ence, and "living" refers to his estate, his means 
of subsistence. We therefore have Capulet say- 
ing that he will die and leave death his all, 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 23 1 

namely his life and fortune. That is to say his 
own personal all; — else what can it mean? 

But Shakespeare does not mean that. Im- 
agine the grief-stricken Capulet, at the supreme 
moment of his passionate and inconsolable 
sorrow, saying that he will leave Death his 
heir to all and then going on in a spirit of speci- 
fication with such a nonsensical distinction! 
This is not the language of passion. The line 
of the Folio has been discarded in favor of an 
ingenious quibble at a complete sacrifice of 
vocal delivery; it halts and boggles over its 
petty point so that no actor could bring it forth 
as from the human heart. 

The Folio says the right thing in just the 
right way. Death is the heir of all life. The 
distracted father says that because there is 
consolation in including the whole world in 
Juliet's doom and his own. He dies and leaves 
the whole world to Death, its ultimate heir. 
It is characteristic of Shakespeare's work (and 
hereby he is strikingly true to our human nature) 
that in time of deep bereavement the whole 
universe is swept along in the stream of personal 
woe. Lear considers the storm as sighing and 
weeping in his behalf, Othello addresses the 
stars, Romeo says, **What less than doomsday 
is the prince's doom.'"' We see the world with 
our own eyes. In such a time old Capulet 
looks on his daughter and sees Death the uni- 
versal heir. "I will die and leave him all hfe 
living" — this simple remark, at such a time, 



232 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

is the grand speech of passion. Consider him, 
on the other hand, perplexing EngHsh with 
anything Hke this: "I will die and leave him all; 
life, living." If he means his own personal 
life and property merely, it is not Shakespear- 
ean, for Shakespeare never wrote like that; 
besides which the statement made here is a 
truism that is little short of ridiculous. Natu- 
rally if he died he would leave his life; and if 
he left his life he would be most Hkely to leave 
his living. 

For some reason, possibly because they could 
not get the point of view, editors have not been 
able to accept and print this line according to 
the FoUo rendition. Capell (1760) made it "I 
will die and leave him all; life leaving, all is 
death's." This became the standard for gen- 
erations; more recently it has settled into the 
form that we have now. Some early editor 
evidently thought — for what he thought we 
can only imagine — that Capulet did not own 
the world and therefore could not logically 
leave it to death; for which reason the heritage 
must be limited to Capulet's personal posses- 
sions. At least the line in its present twist 
does not seem to say anything else. The work 
of editing Shakespeare has always been done by 
very conscientious persons. 

The most scholarly of modern editions of the 
play are "based" on the Second Quarto instead 
of the Folio because the Folio is considered to 
have been based on it. As a matter of fact 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 233 

this mental method of "basing" an edition of 
a play on this early edition or that is largely a 
fallacy. The Folio has at least 10,000 typo- 
graphical errors and the printers of the Quartos 
were no more dependable. All of them are 
useful for reference and comparison, but that 
is all; for we know too little about the authority 
of any of them. The final edition of Shake- 
speare will have to be based on good judgment 
and Shakespearean insight. 



THE PLEASE-MAN'S SMILE 

That smiles his cheek in years and knows the trick 
To make my lady laugh when she's disposed, — 

(Love's Labour's Lost, v, 2, 465) 

I HAVE no doubt that the "yeares" of the 
Quarto should have been youres (yours) — a 
printer's error easily made. 

The whole theme of this long passage is 
privacy of understanding, intimacy between 
two persons with regard to some mutual 
secret; and Shakespeare's word-picture of the 
character sticks strictly to this idea through- 
out. The secret of the masque has been given 
away beforehand to the ladies who were to be 
tricked, and Shakespeare here characterizes, 
with many quick, live word-pictures, the sort 
of ladies'-man who would busy himself with 
carrying the tale to them — he is "some carry- 
tale, some please-man, some slight zany, some 
mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some 
Dick." Then follows the characterization 
quoted above. 

Some such ladies'-man (we are familiar with 
the type) made it his business to go and confide 
to them what was brewing. Setting Shakespeare 
entirely aside now, and referring simply to our 
own knowledge of human nature, what always 
follows in such a case.? What is the please- 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 235 

man's reward? There ensues a period of in- 
timate understanding between the confidential 
fellow and the ladies; he can converse with 
them by their shrewd understanding of looks 
and nods; there is great traffic in winks and 
smiles; and all to the complete mystification 
of third parties who are not in the secret. It 
is especially mysterious to other gentlemen 
who do not seem to be on so intimate a basis 
with the fair. This is the please-man's reward; 
and Shakespeare would not have made a live 
picture of him at all if he had stopped with 
those epithets and not drawn them to some 
climax of particular and pat description. This 
he does in describing him as one who "smiles 
his cheek in yours," the meaning of which, as 
I would understand it, is as follows. 

A man who smiles his cheek in yours is one 
who, entirely because of some mutual under- 
standing, and without any necessity of words, 
makes you smile when he does, or smiles 
answeringly when you do — as in a mirror. 
His smile is at once translatable in the light of 
the mutual secret; the other smiles in return; 
the smile of his cheek goes directly into yours 
as in a looking-glass. Because of this direct- 
ness, without any other medium than the smile, 
and because the smiles evidently have the 
same source, he may be said very truly to be 
smiling his cheek in yours. The line, when 
thus viewed, is so true to human nature that it 
becomes the very soul and climax of the 



236 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

characterization. It shows the ladies' please- 
man actively at work and reaping his reward. 

All present-day texts have it "in years," the 
explanation being: "smiles his cheek into 
wrinkles that give him the look of age." This 
is inharmonious with the whole spirit of the 
picture; it is foreign to the theme. Why 
should Shakespeare here drag in the idea of a 
haggard and aged smile — especially as such a 
smile and with no further connection.^ It is 
more Shakespearean to stick to the subject, to 
keep directly on to the point and drive it deeper 
into human nature. 

Various emendations have been suggested — 
Theobald thought it ought to h^ fleers; Hanmer, 
tears; Jackson, yeas^ etc. Furness, in lack of 
a plausible emendation, agrees with Warburton, 
Farmer and Steevens that it is "years" refer- 
ring to a look of age. An understanding of the 
point in human nature, it seems to me, would 
have suggested yours, which is, after all, the 
most likely typographical error. Shakespeare 
uses the word yours otherwhere in his work; 
and hundreds, or rather thousands, of changes 
in the original text have been made on a less 
evident basis of typographical error. 

The line immediately following this drives 
home the same meaning — "To make my 
lady laugh when she's disposed." This imme- 
diately makes itself consistent with the con- 
text; and there is nothing so Shakespearean 
as sticking to the subject. 



A LOVE DETAINED 

Sister, you know he promis'd me a chaine. 
Would that alone, a love he would detaine, 
So he would keepe fair quarter with his bed. 

(Comedy of Errors, ii, i, 107) 

The above is the text of the First Folio, a 
reading that passed out of use beginning with 
the Second Foho (1623). All efforts to read 
this passage as it stands in the original copies 
seem to be confined to the idea that a "love'* 
could only refer to the woman whom Adriana 
supposed to be keeping her husband away 
from his bed; in which case her wish would not 
make consistent good sense. Hence the sub- 
stitution of "alone, alone" for "alone a love" 
in all modern editions. 

In my way of seeing it, the First Folio reading 
makes good sense while the other does not. I 
think it to be evident in the plays that in 
Shakespeare's day, or at least in his usage, any 
love token or remembrance, or any little loving 
act or thought was spoken of as a "love." 
This would seem a quite natural usage. For 
instance, in "King John," iv, 4, 49, Prince 
Arthur quotes himself as comforting Hubert 
when he was ill — 



238 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

Saying, 'What lack you'? and 'Where lies your grief?' 
Or 'What good love may I perform for you?' 

Here the word "love" would certainly seem 
to be used in the sense of an act of love. In A 
Midsummer Night's Dream, ii, 2, 154, Hermia 
exclaims, "Speak, of all loves! I almost swoon 
with fear." This would be equivalent to say- 
ing — Of all loving acts you could perform for 
me, speak. Again in "The Merry Wives of 
Windsor" we have a like usage (ii, 2, 118) as 
also in "Othello," iii, i, 13, though here the 
Quarto reading "of all loves" has been done 
away with in favor of "for love's sake." 

If my understanding of the word is permissi- 
ble, the "love" referred to is the chain itself 
which is mentioned in immediate connection, 
a love token; and this would make the First 
Folio reading preferable as having more con- 
sistency and continuity of thought. And why 
should not a love-token be spoken of as "a love" 
inasmuch as it is a separate act of love.? 

The sense, then, would be as follows. Adri- 
ana, who is afflicted with a fear that her hus- 
band is being kept away from home by another 
woman, suddenly remembers that he promised 
her a chain, which love-token has not yet been 
forthcoming; and as this fact pops into her 
mind in the present connection it adds to her 
suspicions. But immediately, in a woman's 
mood of being willing to suffer so long as her 
wrongs do not extend too far, she reflects — 
"Sister, you know he promised me a chain. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 239 

Would that a love alone were all that he would 
detain from me," etc. 

I suggest this reading more especially be- 
cause the present text — "alone, alone" — 
does not make satisfactory sense as generally 
explained. It is supposed to mean simply by 
himself or away from other women. But when 
we proceed to the next line the word "so," 
which must be taken either in the sense of 
providing or of thus, does not fit satisfactorily. 
The first makes utter nonsense and the latter 
an inane truism. Then, too, the chain is men- 
tioned only to be dropped in a detached sort 
of way. 

It is generally considered that Shakespeare 
wrote "alone, alone," and that the printer of 
the First FoHo, by getting a letter upside down, 
turned an n into a u, which latter was a & in 
Elizabethan times. But it is a rule that works 
both ways; the printer of the Second Folio pos- 
sibly turned a u into an n. In any case, the 
ingenuity of a typographical theory should not 
blind us to consideration of character, situa- 
tion, continuity of sense and literary needs in 
general. 

The same understanding of "love" would 
clear up that long passage in "All's Well That 
Ends Well," beginning with i, i, i8o. In this 
case the love tokens, instead of gifts, are 
thoughts — tokens of the mind. As Ophelia 
says, "Nature is fine in love, and where 't is 
fine, it sends some precious instance of itself 



240 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

after the thing it loves." So Helena sends her 
whole multitude of emotions, her various 
thoughts and inward attitudes after the absent 
Bertram. The fact that so much might thus 
be cleared up is in itself an indication that 
there is something in the Shakespearean use 
of the word which editors have missed. 



ADRIANA'S POINT OF VIEW 

I see the jewel best enamelled 
Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still 
That others touch, and often touching will 
Wear gold; and no man that hath a name 
By falsehood and corruption doth it shame. 

(Comedy of Errors, ii, i, 109) 

Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed; 
I live distained, thou undishonored. 

(ii, I, 147) 

These passages, which comprise two of the 
three most famous difficulties in "The Comedy 
of Errors," are best solved together because 
they embody the same point of view. Aside 
from the fact that it has so long baffled students 
of Shakespeare, the point of view is interest- 
ing because Shakespeare here carries to its 
logical conclusion the biblical view that man and 
wife are flesh of one flesh. At the same time 
it is his strongest means of giving us an insight 
of one of his ideal women. 

Adriana believed, in the most absolute and 
unqualified sense, that husband and wife are 
one. She believes this just as the theologian 
believes that the Trinity is one, and with quite 
as metaphysical a thoroughness. Husband 
and wife together form a self; each half of that 



242 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

self is the other; neither of them, as an indi- 
vidual, is so great and perfect and beautiful a 
being as the self that is formed by both. They 
are, in short, flesh of one flesh; and there is 
really no self of one without regard to the 
other. This being true, the facts must have 
their logical outcome. If a man commits 
adultery, it is his wife's virtue that is lost, not 
merely his own. 

To this point of view we must add another 
fact which Adriana took into account when 
considering her status as the wife of an un- 
faithful husband. According to the custom of 
the world, the man is not greatly dishonored. 
As to this latter, neither does her reputation 
suff"er for his misdeeds; but that is not what 
concerns her. She is concerned about her 
virtue in fact, and she does not confuse it with 
mere reputation. Thus, when he is unchaste, 
her virtue suffers, and his reputation does not. 
Shakespeare makes her arguments on this 
rather unusual point the means of bringing 
vividly to our minds a fine woman's sense of 
revulsion toward any violation of the married 
relation, and this apart from any mere jealousy 
on her part. He makes this latter plain by 
placing her in contrast with her sister who is 
always accusing her of being merely jealous. 

The Bible states in so many words that man 
and wife are "one flesh"; but when Shake- 
speare follows it out to this logical conclusion 
it seems somewhat strange and metaphysical. 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 243 

However, the reason that critics have not been 
able to come to any positive conclusion as to 
the meaning of these passages is that they have 
not entered with full sympathy into the wo- 
man's point of view and accepted what is plainly 
put before them. 

The "enamel" of this figurative jewel is her 
beauty; the solid gold her virtue. As her 
husband seems to have lost his early infatua- 
tion with her she feels that her beauty has 
faded. While this superficial adornment of a 
woman may be somewhat worn with her she 
feels that the solid gold of virtue is left. So 
much certain critics have perceived, uncer- 
tainly; but now comes the crux of her point 
of view. 

That others touch and often touching will 
Wear gold. 

She here means that her own virtue is being 
lost by other women touching that of her 
husband. If we have accepted the point of 
view which I have stated, this must be perfectly 
plain; and when we stop to consider it the 
idea is not so very far-fetched; for virtue is an 
ideal, a state of inner purity as well as a mere 
act; and so a woman like Adriana might easily 
feel that when the virtue of their mutual 
relation is contaminated her own virtue be- 
comes as nothing. Certainly if she did not 
have some such feehng her ideals would not be 
very high; and Shakespeare deals largely with 



244 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

ideals — "There is nothing good or bad but 
thinking makes it so." 

and no man that hath a name 
By falsehood and corruption doth it shame. 

As a man who has a good name, an ideal 
character, does not counterfeit and debase 
gold, so a man who has real virtue will safe- 
guard its purity. This brings us at once to an 
understanding of the second passage, the 
solution of which includes the whole point of 
view that has now been set forth. She is here 
addressing her husband personally: 

Keep then, fair league and truce with thy true bed; 
I live distained, thou undishonored. , 

This distained is the reading of the First 
Folio (1623), the word at that time having 
the same meaning as it has now — stained. It 
is a poetical usage. She is therefore saying 
that so long as her husband has violated the 
relation between them, her own virtue has 
been stained while he has as good a reputation 
as ever. As commentators could never see how 
the husband's chastity could be considered as 
affecting the wife's chastity so long as her own 
acts were pure, they have considered that dis- 
tained was a printer's error in the original edi- 
tion. The word was therefore changed to 
unstained, an emendation that has been ac- 
cepted by editors for about a hundred and 
fifty years. The change was made by Hanmer, 
1744; and the present-day standard among 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 245 

Shakespeare scholars, the Globe edition, still 
has unstained. We should put back per- 
manently the word as it stands in the First 
Folio. It becomes consistent as soon as we 
understand the tenor of Adriana's remarks as 
a whole. 

It is interesting, with this general view of 
marriage in mind, to re-read "The Phoenix and 
the Turtle." Here we see Shakespeare ex- 
pressing the same idea in a more abstract and 
metaphysical way. 

So they loved as love in twain 
Had the essence but in one; 
Two distincts, division none; 
Number there in love was slain. 

So between them love did shine 
That the turtle saw his right 
Flaming in the Phoenix' sight; 
Either was the other's mine. 

Property was thus appalled. 
That the self was not the same: 
Single nature's double name 
Neither two nor one was called. 

Reason in itself confounded. 
Saw division grow together, 
To themselves yet either neither 
Simple were so well compounded. 

We here see that Shakespeare worked upon 
the same essential view outside of his treat- 
ment of it in connection with Adriana. Note 
in the above that "Either was the other's 
mine," does not simply mean that each be- 
longed to the other. It means, as we are now 



246 SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 

in a position to understand, that each was the 
other's self — "mine" in every regard that me 
could convey; and in the same thorough ac- 
ceptation that Adriana regarded married union. 
This idea was native to Shakespeare's mind; 
and in the play he simply gave it more concrete 
illustration. That the critics of all time have 
been so confused to get sense out of it simply 
proves our explanation as Shakespearean, for 
there indeed, as the poet says, we see "reason 
in itself confounded." 

So far I have done little more than to state 
the basis of my explanation; but as my proposi- 
tion is to restore and establish the original 
text for all time, and give it this wholly con- 
sistent interpretation, the reader will want 
something more in the way of proof. This is 
easily furnished. 

Turn to "The Comedy of Errors," ii, 2, 120 
to 131 and hear Adriana lecturing her husband 
(as she supposes). 

How comes it now my husband, O, how comes it, 

That thou art thus estranged from thyself? 

Thyself I call it, being strange to me. 

That individable, incorporate, 

Am better than thy dear self's better part. 

Ah, do not tear away thyself from me! 

For know, my love, as easy may'st thou fall 

A drop of water in the breaking gulf 

And take unmingled thence that drop again, 

Without addition or diminishing, 

As take from me thyself and not me too. 

Adriana here gives it as metaphysical a 
statement as we find in "The Phoenix and the 



SOME TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES IN SHAKESPEARE 247 

Turtle" — marriage a Duality of two that are 
one essence just as the Trinity is of three. 

But a less ingenious statement will bring 
it home at once to the everyday intellect. 
Farther on she makes this very definite state- 
ment as to her own relation to other women 
and her husband's unchastity. She considers 
it her own disgrace. 

I am possess'd with an adulterate blot; 
My blood is mingled with the crime of lust; 
For if we two be one and thou play false, 
I do digest the poison of thy flesh, 
Being strumpeted by thy contagion. 

This proves our interpretation of the doubt- 
ful passages absolutely. All that she says is 
consistent with the point of view set down. 
The "unstained" of modern editions is wrong. 
Nor must editors who retain "distained" do it 
upon the basis of Knight who gave it a defini- 
tion opposite to its sense by considering that 
Shakespeare was confused in his vocabulary 
and meant unstained from the standpoint of 
"dis-stained." 



INDEX 



Acting, lines fitted for, 14 

Agriculture, Shakespeare's 
knowledge of, 193-194 

All's Well that Ends Well, 
Diana and Bertram, 8 

Angelo, character of, 32, 69 

Anticipation, art of, 68, 99, 

»-2io, 217 

Apposition, antithesis and con- 
trast, 17, 22, 32, 91, 196 

Archbishop, Wolsey character- 
ized, 187; Scroop, 200-201 

Aristocracy, nature of, 158-160 

Astronomy, Shakespeare and 
Ptolemaic, 103 

Audience, the Globe's appre- 
ciation of Prince Hal, 89; 
understanding of scene in 
Tempest, 130; knowledge 
of "cut," 166, 167 

Bank and shoal, meaning in 
Macbeth, 75 

Central ideas, interpretation 
by, 208 

Character, interpretation of 
lines by, 22, 52, 74, 126, 
136, 184, 197 

Chess-playing, in Tempest, 
128-130 

Chivalry and knighthood, na- 
ture of, 79 

Cleopatra, femininity of, 133 

Climatic and pivotal pas- 
sages, 109, III, 113, 127 

Cloten, characterized, 57-58 

Clothier's yard, defined, 86, 87 



Coleridge, puzzled, 161 
Contrast, of characters, 137 
Critics, their failure to connect 
parts, 52, 78, 82, 241; mere 
verbal methods, 114, 125, 
126, 136, 174; wrong sen- 
tence division, 3, 13; a failing 
of, 152; loose methods, 132; 
poetic ear needed, 18; look- 
ing at characters "in round," 
229 

Dialogue, highest type of, 186 

Falconry, practice of, 11 
Figures of speech, unity of, 

9; in time of passion, 10; 

their essential nature, 46; 

worn out by use, 61; Shake- 
speare's policy in regard to, 

4, 104 
Flattery, art of, 23, 24, 188 
Folios, first folio correct, 13, 

25, 55, 161, 203, 231, 24s; 

first folio in error, 172; 

second folio not independent 

source, 50 
Furness, 20, 109, 116, 126, 

132, 134 



GestL 



jrds 



ture, words suiting, 14, 

Government and law, Shake- 
speare's theory of, 27-32 

Hamlet, character of Polonius, 
20-25; central idea of solil- 
o^uy> 3S~37; Hamlet not 
inconsistent, 204; not in- 



250 



INDEX 



sane, 217; psychology of, 
218-219; compared with 
Romeo, 222; a dead self, 
223; gradually unfolded, 228; 
' not a mystery, 229 

Henry IV, Part II, characters 
of play analyzed, 136-142 

"Hopelessly corrupt," Neil- 
son's four passages, 12, 27, 

44. 19s 
Horsemanship, of Macbeth, 75, 

76, 78 
Human nature, Shakespeare 

true to, 4, 20, 42, 98, 127 
Hunting, sight and scent, 69 

Insanity, Hamlet, 217; Shake- 
speare's depiction of its na- 

^^ ture, 84, 85 

" Intention,"Elizabethan mean- 
ing, 103 

Interpretation of obscure lines, 
See Human nature, Char- 
acter, Central ideas. Play as 
a whole. Apposition and 
Contrast 

Irving (Henry) and Measure 
for Measure, 27 

Italian women, parallel be- 
tween Diana and Juliet, 8, 
9,44 

Knighthood, ceremonial of 
dubbing, 80, 81 

Lacuna, supposed instance, 26 
Language, nature of, 61, 188; 
worn phrases avoided, 185; 
fundamental use of words, 
88, 113 
Lear, insanity of, 84, 86; clifF 
episode, its beauty, 112; 
remarkable instance of sus- 
pended interest, 114 
Leontes, character of, 96, 109 
Love, self-abnegation of, 129 
Love's Labour's Lost, char- 
acters described, 53, 57 



Macbeth, his horsemanship, 

75. 7(>, 78 
Marlowe, lines compared with 

Shakespeare's, 190 
Marriage, Adriana's ideas of, 

241, 242 
Measure for Measure, the gen- 
eral purport, 27 
Merchant of Venice, scene ex- 

plained,i75-i8i 
Metaphysics, in As You Like 

It, 147, 152 
Metre, purposely irregular, 18 
Miracles, nature of, no 
Motherhood, Leontes' theory 

of, lOI 

Opening lines, dramatic art in, 

29. 32, 33. 43. 74. 89. 130 
Ophelia, like Polonius, 25 
Organization, Shakespeare's 

art of, 100 
Othello, his feeling of obloquy, 

171 

Parallel passages, 25, 95, 156 
Phoenix and Turtle, note on, 

245-246 
Pistol, his conversation, 72-73 
Play as a whole, governing 

interpretation, 27, 31, 34, 

60,70, 91, 108, no, 127, 

174, 175, 190, 224 
Plot making, its deeper aspects, 

211-212 
Plummet, meaning of, 65 
Point of view anticipated, 

remarkable instance of, j6 
Political economy, in Meas- 
ure for Measure, 28, 29 
Polonius, character of, 21-22 
Preconceptions, disadvantages 

of, 5, 12, 42 
Prince Hal, humor of his 

reform, 89 
Psychology in trifles, 165, 168, 

188, 199, 200; of the art of 

writing, 21 1-2 12 



INDEX 



251 



Punctuation, difficulties with, 
4i»49. 5°. 67, 131, 132, 13s, 
144, 14s, 147, 163, 173, 180, 
183, 203 

Puns, 63, 93 

"Purposely meaningless" lines, 
38, 164 

Reiteration, Shakespearean 

policy, 113 
Romeo and Hamlet, a parallel, 

222 
Runaway's eyes, Furness' 

comment, i; Dowden's, 13 

Scar, meaning of, 45-47 
Scroop, Archbishop, 198-202 
Shakespeare's mind, his work 
organic, 60, 178, 180, 207; 
ability to do many things 
at once, 186, 208; a funda- 
mental thinker, 113, 153, 
160, 184, 188, 120; more 
than a plot-maker, 211, 212 
Surprise, art of, 60; psycho- 
logically used, 114 
Suspended interest, art of, 
33, 114 



Tempest, scene explained, 127- 

130 
Theobald, his emendations, 

33, 56, 114, 173, 174, 

178 
Theories, must be based on 

fact, 16, 64-66 
Typographical error, theories 

of, 18, 30, 31, 49, 113, 145, 

239 

Unfolding of plot and ideas, 
38, 68, 75 

Verbal auxiliaries examined, 
184 

Wink, meaning of, 5-6 

Wolsey, characterized, 184- 
188 

Womanhood, Katherine, 5-6; 
Diana and Juliet, 8-9; views 
of, 44, 45, 48; Cleopatra's 
femininity, 133; character 
of Lavinia, 155-156; Adri- 
ana's view of marriage, 241- 
24s 



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